


Freight

by pyknicGinger



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Blood, Death, F/F, F/M, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 264,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyknicGinger/pseuds/pyknicGinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>==> BE THE SURVIVOR</p>
<p>Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you are TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD. Six years ago, your entire civilization COLLAPSED within the span of THREE MONTHS, leaving you and your family some of the ONLY SURVIVORS. You managed to stay alive because you had been in CLOSE CONTACT with the thing that would eventually WIPE OUT three-fourths of the human population, and have since used your resources to help any other refugees you find. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this has given everyone the widespread impression that you have all of the answers to EVERY PROBLEM EVER, which you most certainly do <em>not</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I: And the World Was Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while, but only recently started writing it down after a fair amount of detail hammering. It's going to be long, and will be separated into two large parts—a scene-setting prologue (PART I) and the main conflict (PART II). I'm in this one for good, though, so I can guarantee it'll be epic.
> 
> Special thanks to [cactus](http://cactuswhisperer.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing and just generally being a great person.
> 
> If you'd like to keep up with my progress, feel free to hit me up on my tumblr, [here](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Theme song for this story is [_And the World Was Gone_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChzRHZGHRNg) by Snow Ghosts.

**  
[12/12/31]**

You sit at home on your couch, perched on the edge of the cushions as your whole body—rigid with what must look like EXCITEMENT—faces the television. Your DAD is standing a few feet behind you in the kitchen, quietly drying plates with a rag, but you don't think he's paying much attention because he, too, has his gaze fixed on the screen. Nearby, your LITTLE SISTER bounces in a plush chair, enthusiastic more because _you're_ supposedly happy than due to any real understanding of the SITUATION about to unfold before the world, broadcast live to homes everywhere. She's only ELEVEN YEARS OLD, after all.

The reporter's usual drone suddenly falters as the camera shifts, and in an instant you're staring at the familiar green grass lawn of English Industries' main laboratory building. You forget all about keeping a neutral face, then, because this is the moment you've been waiting for since the summer's end.

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD. You've spent the last year and a half at Washington State University, studying pre-med as you steadily pursue your dream of becoming a top-notch doctor. The top-notchiest. The _best_. Someday, you might even like to have your name signed in gold as the recipient of a Nobel prize—but you know better than anyone that success can't be made without a little (or more) hard work.

Last summer, however, this far-fetched and most likely UNATTAINABLE GOAL became a fraction closer to QUITE POSSIBLY POSSIBLE when you were selected as one of twenty from a pool of over six thousand global applicants to participate in an internship at the world-famous English Industries medical research labs in New York. There, the final testing procedures on a vaccination that could quite possibly RESHAPE THE FIELD OF MEDICINE AS A WHOLE were taking place, and you had your bags packed the day after you received the letter.

Now, as you watch, one of the most highly-respected men in the field of medicine steps into view behind a podium onscreen, and despite your apprehension you can't but grin _ever_ -so-slightly at a few fond memories he brings to mind. His name is DOCTOR SCRATCH, and in addition to being the establishment's co-proprieter he was your personal mentor at the labs. By the look of his perfectly-coifed blonde hair and snappy white suit, you find it hard to imagine that he’s anything other than a middle-aged Hollywood heart-throb, let alone one of the most innovative figureheads of modern science.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen—and, I suppose, a good _morning_ to others," he begins, flashing a dazzling smile to the various cameras and crews nearby. "I'm sure it's no secret what I'm here today to discuss, but, as always, formalities are a _must_." There's a pause, and his thin lips quirk upwards for a factional second. "Ten years ago, my esteemed colleague and business partner, Lord Caliborn English, immigrated to the United States following the death of a loved one four years prior at the hands of pneumonia, an increasingly-common illness spread through either bacterial or virus strains. While treatment for the condition has been available for nearly a century, there is—there _has been_ —no cure, no vaccination. And countless lives, young and old, have been lost to both unexpected contractions of the illness and the body's inability to handle the infection. Much like the common cold, pneumonia has been a plague for generations, ever-changing, ever-killing.

"But after throwing himself into research and work, Lord English has—after fourteen years—performed what can only be described as a miracle. He, along with our team of highly sought-after medical professionals, has been able to successfully _immunize_ , in a matter of speaking, both test mammals and eventually human patients against the root cause of pneumonia. By feeding small, concentrated doses of a relaxation hormone directed by a specific protein marker into the brain stem—where neurologists have pinpointed the location of cells electrically controlling the functions of the lungs—a person's alveoli can be trained to _resist_ causes of inflammation that lead to pneumonia. And, in testing, it was also discovered that the dose can also help the recipient built a stronger resistance to the root causes of yearly-rotating influenza viruses.

"It is an amazing leap—a permanent solution that could not have been possible without the hard and dedicated work by both our own scientists and those from around the world who flocked to help our research. We are, without a doubt, grateful, and it is thanks to them that I, on behalf of English Industries, can announce with pride that soon every man, woman, and child will be immune to the disease. In mere _months,_ the world will rid of the curse that has tormented humanity for thousands of years. Thank you."

He smiles again as cameras flash, and several reporters rush to the podium hoping to wedge a few questions into his retreat. The Doc is having none of _that_ , though, and he just waves to the crowd before disappearing back into the building. All the while, there's a smooth grin plastered across his face.

Your father laughs, slapping you lightly on the back as he tells you how proud he is, but you just shake your head and return to the kitchen. The dishes won't do themselves.

You try to put up a good front—you really do—but when your family isn't looking your smile falters.

* * *

Later that night, you hole up in your old room, having endured continual praises from your father and subtly-proud snark from your sister with as much happy reception as you can. In truth, you are VERY WORRIED, but you have no idea how to explain why. You've decided instead to keep your mouth shut for the time being, because your feelings would most likely make you sound paranoid and tired, two things that might in turn make your family less inclined to trust your judgment.

With a sigh, scrub your blue eyes under the wire-framed glasses you've had since middle school, and swivel lazily in your desk chair. It is nearly Christmas, and you're home for the holidays for the first time since graduating high school. You had hoped the weeks off would be a happy time, and for the most part they really have been! Just... not this evening. You wonder idly if it's possible to make yourself sick by thinking too much, then realize you should probably already know the answer to that question anyway.

There's a ping from your sleeping computer, and the screen lights up as a Pesterchum window opens on your desktop. Although your own Chumhandle is set to idle for good reason, you can't help but feel a little RELIEVED at the interruption.

— carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 23:47 — 

CG: HEY, SHITSTAIN.

CG: GET YOUR ASS ONLINE.

CG: NOW.

CG: WE NEED TO TALK. LIKE, SERIOUSLY TALK. WE NEED TO DISCUSS A REALLY FUCKING BIG ISSUE, ANDWE NEED TO DO IT UNHINDERED BY THE USUAL SNARKY BULLSHIT YOU, FOR SOME GOD-AWFUL REASON, BELIEVE ADDS ANY KIND OF SUBSTANCE TO ACTUAL REAL CONVERSATION.

CG: FUCK YOU.

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE THERE, JOHN.

EB: hey, karkat!

EB: what are you doing up so late?

EB: wait, that's a bad question.

EB: i don't think you ever sleep :)

CG: I REPEAT: FUCK YOU.

EB: wow, rude! did you message me just to yell?

EB: i'm here!! what did you want to talk about?

Even though you're more than sure you already know where this conversation is about to go, you don't mind letting your best friend take the lead. Once he gets whatever he needs to say off his chest you'll have your chance to speak—but until then he probably won't let you get much of a word in edgewise. It really doesn't bother you, though. Karkat is a good guy once you get around all seven layers of his foul language and standoff-ish attitude.

You've been pals since you met last summer during your time in New York, and the two of you hit it off fairly quickly after realizing you were both entirely out of your element in the EI department you'd been assigned. He isn't aiming to become a medical doctor like you—instead, he's busy studying genetics at a university in Pennsylvania. It's pretty neat, you think. 

CG: DON’T PLAY FUCKING STUPID WITH ME, JOHN. I KNOW YOU SAW IT.

EB: wow, that sounds kind of creepy, karkat.

EB: are you stalking me?

EB: should i warn my family that there is an angry midget watching us?

CG: FUCK YOU.

CG: AGAIN.

EB: but, yeah. in all seriousness, i did.

EB: i saw the interview, i mean.

CG: BY THE END OF THE WEEK, EVERY MOTHER-CLUTCHING BRAT UNDER THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE WILL HAVE GOTTEN THE VACCINE.

CG: WHICH MEANS WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO AT SOME POINT, TOO.

EB: i know.

EB: the labs are giving it out free to those chain clinic places.

CG: I HEARD THE SHITBAGS DOWN AT THE FDA ARE MAKING IT A SCHOOL REQUIREMENT.

EB: that's not going to be put in place until next year, though.

EB: i think???

EB: wait now i'm not sure.

CG: EITHER WAY WE’VE GOT WHAT SIX MONTHS AT MOST? I’M NOT PUTTING THAT SHIT IN MY SYSTEM.

EB: i know, and neither am i. have you convinced your brother?

CG: YEAH, IT WASN’T THAT HARD.

CG: HE DOESN’T REALLY TRUST ANYTHING FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT THESE DAYS.

CG: THAT’S PROBABLY A GOOD THING.

EB: god, i wish my family was as easy as kankri.

EB: my dad keeps saying he's proud to trust something i worked hard on, and my sister doesn't actually have much of a choice if my dad makes a decision.

EB: sigh.

CG: DID YOU TELL THEM WHAT WE SAW?

EB: no.

EB: kind of?

EB: i hinted at it.

EB: sort of ran around the subject.

EB: but i think they got the message.

EB: maybe.

CG: DON'T FUCK WITH ME, JOHN.

CG: CLEARLY THEY NEITHER RECEIVED THE MEMO NOR UNDERSTOOD THE MEANING BEHIND WHAT WAS PROBABLY THE WORST EXCUSE FOR A PROPER EXPLANATION EVER.

EB: i can't just tell them, okay!!

EB: they'll think i'm losing my mind or something.

CG: AS STUPID AS YOU ARE, AND AS DEPRESSINGLY AFFECTIONATE AS YOUR RELATIVES TEND TO BE, I THINK THEY WILL BELIEVE YOU.

CG: WHY WOUDLN'T THEY?

EB: i don't know.

EB: the whole thing was just too surreal, and then there's the fact that i waited this long to say anything. that's kind of suspicious if you ask me!

CG: WHICH I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO, YOU RETARDED LUMP OF QUIVERING BODILY FLUIDS.

EB: in hindsight, it wasn't the best plan.

CG: CLEARLY.

CG: GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, JOHN.

CG: THIS WHOLE PILE OF FUCK IS GOING TO BLOW UP IN OUR GODDAMN FACES SOON, I CAN FEEL IT.

— carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 00:12 — 

You sigh and swivel around in your chair a bit, not really sure what to do with yourself. You know what you _should_ do—but you don't. Do it, that is.

Sleep won't come easily tonight, you can tell, so you take your chumhandle off idle and end up chatting with your cousin Jade well into the morning. She and your mutual cousin Jake are coming up to Washington with your grandparents to spend the holiday, and you can't wait to see them. Convincing that part of your family not to get the vaccination wasn't hard, because your grandparents—for all their science and technical knowledge—don't want anything to do with the English name.

That might be a card you can play again, you think.

Your family tree is more like the Whomping Willow than anything, all torn apart and re-stitched by feuds and divorces and untimely deaths. You've been lucky enough to live a relatively stereotypical suburban life with your father and sister, only barely feeling the effects of what your grandma calls the "bad juju" of your mother's side of the family. Your cousins, however, are a different story.

Only when sun begins to peek through the Washington State morning fog and your dad begins rummaging around downstairs do you finally crawl into bed. The best part about nights without sleep, you think, is the knock-out rest that usually comes after. The kind of dreamless black that leaves you both sore and refreshed when afternoon finally rolls around. It never lasts quite as long as you'd like, though. Sometimes you wish you could sleep forever.

* * *

**[12/22/31]**

You don't sit your family down for The Serious Talk until over a week has passed since the Doc's televised press conference. Thus far, you've managed to keep them away from the clinics with some brief bullshit explanation to that you'd rather not accept free doses. Instead, you say, you’d like to fund the company by purchasing the vaccination yourself (or at least letting your insurance pay for it). It doesn't take much convincing to highjack the task of setting up an appointment with your family physician. You don't actually call the office at all.

The holiday is less than four days away, and your cousins should arrive on Christmas Day. It's now or never, because you're half certain your eccentric extended family might make a mess of things with their own opinions and interjections. As much as you love them, your grandparents can be… passionate about certain topics. 

Thankfully, your sister is home from school on her winter break, so you only have to wait until your dad gets home from work to gather the two of them up. You meet him in the kitchen, and after a few shouts up the stairwell Jane joins you. They can tell that something is bothering you by the way you don't respond as whole-heartedly as you should to their teasing, and as you fiddle with the remote to your small kitchen TV you try not to think about the fact that you're suddenly the center of their attention. After a moment, you finally manage to mute the volume, and then suddenly you can't stall anymore.

"So. Uh. I think it would be in everyone's best interest if we _didn't_ get the English vaccination. Thing. That I worked on last summer." You speech is stilted, and _wow_ you're nervous.

Your dad blinks, but doesn't get the chance to say anything before your sister cuts in with an incredulous, "Why? That's stupid—I don't want to get sick."

"Yeah, well—you might get even more sick if you take it, so shut up and let me finish. _Please_ ," you bite back, sticking your tongue out for maximum maturity points. Dad's eyebrows raise, and he politely asks you to elaborate.Whatever argument you and your sister had been about to drum up is effectively cut off, and after a moment of scrambling for words you continue.

"So. Yeah. There was some stuff that happened last summer that I... didn't exactly mention?" A nervous laugh bubbles its way out of your throat, and you swear your voice hasn't changed pitch _that_ drastically since you were fourteen. "I guess I wasn't really allowed to, because of all the confidentiality papers we had to sign before and after we left, but I trust you guys.” That part isn't exactly true—not really. You'd just needed some excuse explaining why you'd waited so long to start talking. (But your family doesn't have to know that. Nope.) “I think safety's probably a really important thing right now, so it's probably in everyone's best interest that I break a few rules." Your sister snorts, and your father shushes her lightly, urging you to continue.

And you do.

The tale starts short and stilted—boring and pointless. You dance around the important parts and linger too long on the details that don’t matter, but when your family stays quiet—for the most part—as you relay the events from months ago, you start to get lost in your memories and speech slowly becomes easier.

When you first received the letter accepting your internship application as one of twenty selected students, you were beyond ecstatic—who wouldn’t be? True, you were nervous, but the moment you'd read your department placement you’re sure you made a few less-than-manly noises. Your name had been added to the neurobiology roster—not your specialty by any means, but an opportunity too good to pass up—and you were set to work in the testing labs. The testing labs! It was the most hands-on experience someone like you could ever hope to get, working side-by-side with seasoned professionals as they mapped out possible side-effects and made last-minute tweaks to the next big thing in the industry: the EI Vaccine.

The labs, themselves, were laid out like a university campus in middle-of-nowhere upstate New York. Trees, grass, hills, and the occasional stream littered the expansive grounds around each department's building, and as the summer’s live-in help you and your fresh new colleagues were assigned sleeping areas and roommates. You had landed Karkat—the only other intern assigned to the neurobiology sector—as your dorm-buddy, and the two of you had hit it off fairly quickly. By the end of that first day, it was like you'd been friends for years, even if Karkat himself refused to accept it.

Jane interrupts with a sweet comment about how she already _knows_ all this and _gosh_ she has a Christmas bake sale to stock and will you _please_ hurry _up_. Dad pats her head and you just roll your eyes.

Your internship had lasted nearly the entire summer, but the work was exciting and time had passed quickly. You were offered so much to learn, both about the general field of medicine and the special pleasures of laboratory research, and you couldn’t get enough of it. The facilities were brilliant, the atmosphere was brilliant, the _people_ were brilliant—all working toward the same better future, happier humanity. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity filled with every positive adjective anyone could pull from a Merriam-Webster thesaurus.

Until, of course, it _wasn’t_.

 _It_ happened three days before you were supposed to leave. You and Karkat had taken to staying late in the archive room after finishing your assigned tasks. As interns, you were allowed to stay well passed closing, and you spent hours poring over notes and writings from men and women you had, just months ago, only dreamed of meeting face-to-face. The stores of endless information were like some kind of rad intellectual drug, and your superiors had done more than encourage your interest.

Like the responsible teenagers you were, that night you'd planned to lock up the building before back to your rooms—but you never got the chance. Sometime before twelve, the door had opened and you’d been quickly ushered into the halls by a woman you’d met only once, maybe twice. As far as you knew, she worked in a different sector, and you'd never really had any reason to cross paths. She was young, ordered you to follow in a brusque half-English that suggested she'd been born somewhere on the Asian continent, and barely give you the chance to argue as she began subtly manhandling you through the corridors.

You were so confused neither of you really remember to protest (or at least ask where you were going) until you were already making your way down one of the metal stairwells toward the lower levels of the building. She hadn't responded. Instead, she'd just flashed her badge—a green card that put her office on the same level as the Doc's—and that was that.

You'd only been to the basement once before then. Aside from the programming offices and storage rooms, the place wasn't much more than a concrete cavern lined above with curling fluorescent lights. Thinking back, you realize that should have been the moment it occurred to you that something was wrong—a strange, silent woman leading two unsuspecting interns to their doom? The set up would have been perfect for a cheap horror flick… or a bad porno.

Eventually, the woman stopped in front of a metal-plated door, identical to every other one along the hallway, and swiped her EI-issued identification badge through the card receiver. Without waiting to check to see if either of you were still following, she pushed inside as soon as the lock clicked open.

Halfway down the next hallway, it finally dawned on the both of you that this was _definitely_ a place you were _not_ supposed to be.

For the first few feet, the walk was almost identical to the labs on the upper floors, but as you made your way deeper inside things began to change. The solid, white doors became glass-plated, surrounded by windows—and, before long, entire rooms were visible through clear walls along either side of the corridor. Most were empty.

Some were _not_.

You saw jungle cats, primates, wild dogs, and massive reptiles under harsh scrutiny by a few sporadic scientists and doctors, but no one you passed questioned your presence. They seemed too wrapped up in what they were doing to care.

The longer you walked, the less frequent the other professionals became, and each room you passed grew steadily emptier and emptier.

Until, of course, they weren’t. 

In the blink of an eye, it was like you had stepped out of the lab and into a _prison_. Glass-plated rooms on either side were occupied by _people_ , one or more, in various states of catatonia. It was penitentiary frozen in time—men, women, and children stood or sat, staring off into space. It was a world-class lobotomy convention.

It was frightening.

But then, every so often, you would pass a _cell_ housing something quite the opposite—a detainee shrieking and screaming and clawing at the glass, eyes wide and thirsty and frantic and _inhuman_.

The woman had stopped, then, in front of one of these particular rooms, and you watched in silence as the man inside tried again and again to climb the concrete walls, blood streaking down the white-painted bricks as he ripped his nails off against the stone.

Only then did she finally turn to look at you both, unfazed by the chaos as you frozen at the sight of it all. Her stare was hard and silent, daring you to say anything. Daring you to run away, you thought.

Next to each door, there was a small, paper plaque like the ones you could find in any common hospital. But that there were no names listed, only numbers and doses—lists of chemicals and ingredients and _oh God what have you walked into you have no idea oh God_.

"It didn't take Karkat and me long to figure out where we were after that,” you say, rubbing your eyes tiredly. “I mean, it had all the make of a testing facility, and even though EI is always working on something _new_ everyone was pretty focused on the pneumonia shot. We just—"

Suddenly, movement on the TV behind your father catches your eye, and you falter, scrambling for the remote. You can't help the curse that slips out as you struggle with the volume button, completely ignoring your concerned Dad as he calls your name.

But you don't care, because you're too focused on the Breaking News headline that glares Game-Over-red across the screen. "Shit," you say. "Shit, shit, _shit._ I have to call Karkat." Without waiting for an answer, you bolt from the room, leaving behind the drone of CNN as an unnaturally-frazzled evening reporter tries to relay the incoming information as quickly as possible.

_...ver the past eleven days, more than two-point-six billion people across the globe have received English Industries' revolutionary vaccine, just over two-hundred million of which are United States citizens. Despite that number amounting to only a fraction of the world's estimated eight billion in population, the repercussions are—and will be—significant. As of this evening, there have been over six million reported hospitalizations as a result of what can only be the highly sought-after treatment, and the number is continually growing. If you or a loved one ha..._

Your family doesn't follow as you sprint upstairs with the wind on your heels, and you can only assume they're watching unfold what you and your best friend predicted months ago.

* * *

It takes a few tries to get Karkat on the phone, but when he finally does answer he somehow manages to sound absurdly _calm_ about the whole thing. You suspect he's had his freak-out already, while you yourself are only now just hitting full-on panic mode. Neither of you can talk long, however, and it doesn't take much to agree on one thing unconditionally: get _out_.

You've both known for a while that something big—something horrible—has been on the horizon for months, now. You'd never gotten any sort of explanation from the woman, no instructions telling you what to do with what you'd been shown or any real clarification as to what it actually was, so you'd had to come up with your own speculations and theories and worries. None of them had been pretty, all of them sounded like they'd been pulled from the script of some gag-inducing 1950's B-movie.

In the days following your basement-bound adventure, both you and Karkat had retreated out of whatever small spotlight the labs had to offer. It was in your respective best interests to act like nothing had changed, you decided—that nothing was different. Everything on the facility grounds was state-of-the-art, high-tech, top-of-the-line. There was no way they—whoever _they_ might be—didn't have security footage of your entrance into whatever that basement room was. And with your photographs came every sliver of information about your lives, on-record for your initial admission into the internship program.

Only after your flights had safely landed back in your respective areas of residency and several months had passed without incident did you realize your lives probably weren't going to end messily in some random freak accident—the kind meant to keep people quiet.

With that epiphany had come a wave of paranoid what-ifs and questions, and the eventual formulation of a contingency plan. You had neither the ability nor the knowledge stop it—whatever _it_ was—because you'd already waited too long for your stories to be believable. And, of course, you had _zero_ proof that you weren't crazy. But you knew you could at least try to keep yourselves and your families safe when the time came.

After less than fifteen minutes of frantic flailing and shooshing and panicking and virtual papping over the telephone line with Karkat, you make your way back downstairs to the kitchen, much calmer than before. Your dad and sister are still glued to the television. Calling on the cool, confident doctor-face you've spent more hours than you'd like to admit practicing in front of your bathroom mirror, you clap your hands and grin, all teeth, and promptly announce that the three of you are going camping. Starting tomorrow morning. For an as-of-yet-undetermined length of time.

No one questions it.

Some part of you is grateful for the sudden chaos. It makes convincing your family a hell of a lot easier. You know, though, that the countdown you've long-since been denying has already in motion for days. The metaphorical clock is ticking, and you're not really sure you want to know what will happen when the timer hits zero. You _are_ aware, however, that you'd rather not be around to find out the moment it does.

With a quick shout over your shoulder that you'll be back soon, you race out the door and to your car, peeling out of the driveway before the front door to your house has even closed. To take your mind off the panic still half-running through your brain, you call your cousin in hopes of catching her before she boards her plane to the United States. She doesn't pick up. Not wanting to sit in silence, you flick on the radio and shift to one of the national news stations. After just a few minutes of listening as you battle gridlock, you realize that things are falling apart quicker than you had anticipated.

With global health suddenly at mass-risk and every piece of EI-funded medical research under question, transportation and communication systems are at a near stand-still until "trusted" authorities can make an accurate assessment of the vaccination's side effects. Emergency meetings have been called up between world government health authorities in an effort to work together, and thirteen countries have already issued arrest warrants for Lord English and his colleagues.

You can only hope that the rest of your family made it into the country safely—or at least retreated back to your grandparents' isolated island.

Not soon enough, you break out of the interstate bumper-to-bumper traffic and shoot into the local hospital's packed parking lot. As a medical student, you've been spending more and more time here on your days off, volunteering in the free clinic and running errands for the doctors. You haven't come to help, though—no matter how much you want to. There's nothing you can do anymore.

An empty school messenger bag in hand, you run in through the entrance marked _EMPLOYEES ONLY_ , even though you technically don't work in the facility. Now, your only goal is to get in and out without being noticed—because people here know that you worked with the vaccine last summer, and that could cause some major problems. As far as you know none of the interns are being charged with anything yet, but with all the uncertainty circling around the company you're well aware could change at any moment. The halls are busy and crowded, nurses and doctors shuffling half-comatose patients between rooms amid a plethora of stereotypically hospital-grade injuries and illnesses. You're reminded of the cells, and suddenly you feel like you're going to be sick.

You push forward and keep your head down, ignoring the growing urge to throw up or scream or run away or _option four: all of the above_. No one is paying attention to you, too wrapped up in their own cases as the frantic tension hanging thick over the whole place—over the world—slowly builds.

It doesn't take much time to find what you're looking for. The fifth-floor supply closet is the largest in the building, tucked away in the back of the maternity ward because apparently they could spare the space. The passageways, normally quiet, are almost silent now because whatever extra help usually on-hand has been sent below. You slip inside the large room unnoticed and immediately begin to load up, stuffing rolls of gauze and disinfectants and bags and needles and vials of basic-to-upper-grade medical provisions into your pack. You have no idea how long you'll be gone, but you do know from the stories your grandparents have told that more often than not it pays well to be prepared.

When you've gathered everything you can carry, you slide back out of the room and walk as casually as you can toward the exit. (And by casually, you mean with just enough panic to fit with the flow of the crowd but not so much that you draw unnecessary attention to yourself.) You're twelve steps from freedom when you're spotted. It's the first-floor receptionist—a nice girl you took out to dinner once—and she stands up, toppling over the chair behind her desk. "John!" she shouts, and as heads start turning in your direction you duck behind a tired mother ushering along three kids. Before the girl has the chance to chase you, you're already bolting through the entrance toward your car.

Your next stops are no less chaotic, and soon you've got your trunk packed with bags from the local Safeway, where you stock up on preserved food and fresh-water jugs and anything else you can think of, and the hardware store. You have basic camping equipment stuffed in your garage already, but your family wilderness outings are usually backed moreso by the Harley side of your tree than the Egbert. Now, however, you don't have the luxury of their help, and you can only hope that you pick up everything you'll eventually need. While the grocery store is as jammed as the hospital, you’re lucky enough that no one (else) seems to have reached the emptied-Lowes stage of global panic.

You don't care about cost as you rack up charges on your own card, then your Dad's. Money won't matter where you're going.

You're struggling through a shopping-center parking lot, arms so filled with bags you think you've lost feeling in both hands, when your phone rings and you nearly drop everything in your fumbling haste to find it. Caller ID blinks with a goofy picture of you and your cousin taken in your middle school glory days, and your heart jumps. "Oh my God, Jade!" you breathe, holding your cell in one hand as you try to stuff the last of your bags into the trunk before they hit the ground.

"John?" she sounds frazzled, but otherwise calm. _Thank fuck_.

"Yeah—who else would it be?"

"No one, sorry! You just sound different, that's all! Have you been running?"

"Yeah, kind of," you laugh, because it suddenly occurs to you how surreal the whole situation is. It's like you've been moving on autopilot for the past few hours, and your cousin's voice is only just now bringing you back to earth. "Where are you? Are you alright? Did Jake and Grandma Harley make it? Are you guys all in the country now?" Soon, you have your car started and you're peeling out onto the road, phone still held tight to your ear.

"So you heard?"

"About the vaccination? Yeah—it's all over the news."

There's a pause and some shuffling on the other end of the line, and when your cousin speaks up again there's something in her tone that you can't quite place. You wonder for a second if you were too quick to feel relieved. "John? You told Grandpa and the rest of us not to get the shot. Did you know this was going to happen?"

Your breath hitches, and you just want her to _answer your questions_ because you still don't know what's going on and you're _so worried_. But she's avoiding it, you can tell. You two have been so close for so long, you can pick up on things like that. It's frustrating. "No. Yes—maybe? It's a long story." You huff, blasting through a yellow light just as it turns red. "The important thing is that whatever this is, it _is_ happening, and it's happening now, and Jesus, Jade, _will just you tell me you’re all okay?_ "

Jade sighs, and you feel kind of bad for snapping at her but you _need_ to know because now that you're thinking straight, grounded, you can feel your composure slowly slipping away. "...Jake and Grandma landed, but they froze all incoming and outgoing flights just after they unloaded. We're stuck on the mainland."

"Shit," you curse, swerving around some dumbass in a minivan who, for some reason, thinks it's necessary to drive at a snail's-pace in the left lane. "You guys have to get to the States and meet up with us somehow. Or head back to your house. It doesn't matter which—just get out of there and away from people. Let me talk to Grandpa Harley—is he around?"

"Yeah," she replies, and you can tell she's getting a little shaken up by the tone of your voice. _You're_ getting a little shaken up by the tone of your voice.

One static-blur of movement on the line later, your grandfather's low, soothing voice crackles in, uncharacteristically serious when he greets you with the typical, "Hey, old boy—how've you been?"

You don't waste any time explaining what you can, and his focused-yet-gentle questions and replies have you clear-headed by the time you pull back into your driveway. You tell him your plans, and he adds input and advice of his own to help solidify things for you and your Dad and Jane. If there was ever any doubt that you had cool grandparents, it's gone by the time you both hang up with reassurances and well-wishes and proclamations of familial love. You refuse to think about how much it sounds like you're saying _goodbye_ for the last time.

When you get back into your house, you spot your sister in the kitchen first, already busy at work loading up cloth bags with food from your pantry. Behind her glasses, you can tell that her eyes are red and puffy—she's been crying—but her face is set in a firm, determined scowl you know means she's nowhere near ready to give up. A swell of pride wells up in your chest, and you swoop in like the big brother you are (but often fail to be) and gather her into your arms, crushing her in a bear hug. She accidently drops a can of green beans on your foot, but you don't say anything because this is a touching moment, damn it, and you both need this.

For a few moments, you just cling to each other, and you want nothing more than to apologize for things you have—had—no control over. You don't open your mouth, though. Any words still left to say would sound hollow.

The garage door opens just as she asks if all of her friends are going to die, and you're so, so, _so_ grateful when your dad comes inside the house to find you. You don't think you would be able to tell her the truth without crying too.

* * *

By the time the three of you sit down to dinner, you're all tense and exhausted, but you and Jane help Dad without complaint. It's the last meal you'll have that's been cooked in the comfort of your own home, you think. Your father doesn't bake for the occasion, and that alone speaks volumes about the situation.

You eat in silence, the only buzzing background noise coming from the television as broadcasters relay the latest details coming in from throughout the country and across the world. Reported cases of sudden catatonia have spread far and wide, but the tell-tale animalistic hysteria you witnessed in the laboratory basement hasn't made itself known yet. You hope that particular stage was a fluke, but at this point you aren't sure of anything.

As you slowly chew what might possibly be the best lasagna you've ever eaten in your life, it occurs to you that your family is completely uprooting themselves without really asking why. They're only slightly more in the dark than you about the finer details of the vaccination (because to be honest you know you don't understand as much as you think you should) so you can't help but wonder if there's some other reason they're willing to drop everything and follow you into the woods. Maybe they think you're now a criminal on the run. It kind of feels like you are, at least.

Whatever their reasons, they haven't stopped trusting you yet. It's a good sign and you're not about to start questioning miracles, so you just keep quiet.

Everyone eventually heads to bed after a close-knit round of dishwashing, but you don't go to sleep—how could you? Your whole world is starting to fall apart, and all you can do is watch as the bricks you built your life on begin to crumble. Only in the darkness of your room, wrapped up in the Ghostbusters comforter you've had since middle school, do you finally let the last of your practiced face slip away and _sob_. It's not pretty, it's not sweet. It's raw and painful and wet—and you're convinced it would be loud, too, if you hadn't buried yourself so far under your blankets that everything outside the cocoon is muffled and still. After an eternity, the tears stop pouring out of your eyes, but you spend another half-hour-day-month-century trembling, gasping in your sheets. When your chest hurts so bad you can barely breathe, you finally lie still, suffocating under the layers of fabric but too mentally burned out to move.

* * *

**[12/23/31]**

The next morning, it's clear that no one else in your family slept much, either. Your sister is stiff and pensive, and she barely says more than two words to you as you both pile the last few things (a plush animal or four; several blank spiral books and a pack of pens; the box of notes and research on English Industries’ work you've collected over the past few months, kept hidden under your bed) into Dad's car. The man himself tries to put up a good front throughout the whole thing, but you can tell he's just as tense as the rest of you by the fact that his hair is uncharacteristically mussed and he makes no move to tuck in his wrinkled shirt.

After you lock the front door from the inside one last time, you make one last sweep through the house, looking for anything else you might have forgotten. When being thorough turns into badly-hidden stalling, though, you force yourself to head to the garage. It's filled to the ceiling with cardboard boxes of memories, wood and tools from projects started by various relatives over the years, the dismantled remains of your old swingset—everything but the minivan that there's never quite been enough room for.

With a sigh, you set your house alarm and flick the deadbolt on the back door, before turning to open the car-sized entrance to the outside. Jane and your dad are already buckled in and ready to go, waiting on you, but you needed this last moment to say goodbye to the house you've called home for nearly two decades.

Even though it's still early in the morning and the daylight isn't as gut-wrenchingly bright as could be, you still have to squint as the big plastic-metal-whatever doors slowly rise. Something moves out of the corner of your eye, but you can't really tell what it is. You're not too focused on your surroundings anymore, anyway. Your brain has already moved on to the journey ahead.

When the windshield of your car comes into view, you can see your father sitting in the driver's seat, and give him a little wave. He flops a hand back tiredly, and not for the first time do you reg—

Something hits your back without warning, knocking you forward onto the concrete and pressing the air out of your lungs as you fight to catch yourself—just barely. You can't move. There's weight, heavy like led, squirming and writhing on top of you, and suddenly you're working on instinct you weren't even aware you had. You heave yourself up and reach behind you, knocking the _thing_ over your head as you struggle to stand. It lands hard on the ground with the _crack!_ of bone hitting concrete, and only then do you realize that it's a _person_.

Oh, _fuck_.

He keeps convulsing, though—flailing and floundering to the side, trying to get away from something that isn't there, and you immediately rush forward, hoping you didn't hurt him. _What the hell was he doing in our garage?_ you think, but you decide quickly that he was probably homeless and scared of the recent global developments and looking for shelter and—

He's still face down where he landed, but when you get close enough he turns his head to you and _hisses_ and _holy shit his eyes are yellow and he's lunging what do you do you have to get out of the way and—_

You get your legs working enough to jump back just as he leaps toward you off the ground, still spitting and hissing and blinking like he can't quite see right. In seconds, you're pressed back up against one side of the never-ending box tower, and you have to take a second dive to the ground in order to avoid another round of airborne teeth and rage.

You need to defend yourself, but you don't want to hurt him too badly, so you do the first thing that comes to mind when you think _self defense_ —you throw a punch at his face. He falters just long enough for you to get a good look at his contorted, stunned expression, and you feel your stomach drop. At some point, he had stepped back into the shadows of your garage, but the blow you land knocks him back out into the sunlight. You wonder if his skin really _is_ that color, or if the morning clouds are playing tricks on your already-poor vision.

He flinches, hissing again, and launches himself at you again just as you start to sprint toward the car. Your father is still in the front seat, leaning forward over the dash with his fingers white-knuckled on the wheel as he yells something to you.

Your brain finishes processing what he's saying just as something latches onto your ankle and you stumble (but you don't fall you can't fall shit shit _shit_ ). The man is back on the floor, arms stretched and one hand gripping your foot. He claws at your pant leg, scratching and scratching and _scratching_ as you try to yank away, dragging him along with you for several agonizing feet. He won't let go, though. You see his other hand reach up, and in the span of less than a moment it becomes clear to you that you won't make it out of this alive if he grabs you with all ten of his too-sharp fingers. No man should be this strong.

You reach out blindly for something—anything—and before you really realize what you've grasped you're swinging a heavy mass of stone and wood down onto the clutching arms with as much force as you can muster. The head of your grandfather's sledgehammer slams on the bones with a sickening _crunch_ , and suddenly you're free and fleeing to the safety of the minivan's passenger seat, tool in hand.

"Fucking _go!_ " you shout, nearly slamming the car door against your foot as you fumble for the remote garage button on your dad's rearview mirror. You click it just in time to see the man struggle to stand again—he's back in the sun, now, and you can see blood (is that blood?) pooling around his feet as it pours from the bone-puncture wounds on his forearms. The machinery is old, and you're convinced it won't shut before he gets out. " _Go!_ "

You glance over at your father to see him staring at you with a look of horrified disbelief (and fear?), but he finally does what you say. Within seconds, you're peeling down the quiet suburban road and screeching onto the highway, heading north. The car is silent save the sound of your heavy breathing and the blood pounding so hard in your ears you're convinced your sister in the back seat can hear it. As the adrenaline fades, though, your brain begins to register the stinging pain in your leg, and you don't have to look to tell that you've got a nasty wound or _five_ where the man— _thing_ —was holding you down. It needs to be treated immediately, so you muster up the energy to ask Jane for the smaller first aid kit you packed with your things.

Your dad speaks up before you have the chance to call back to her, however. "Son...?" He glances over at you, and there's that god-damned _look_ again. You want to curl up and die, but you're too high-strung and stressed to actually do so. "What was—? We should c-call the police, or something. I don't think..." he trails off, clearing his throat while you wait as patiently as you can with your leg practically pouring blood onto his cloth flooring. "Do you think he'll be alright, son?" He doesn't ask what happened, which you're grateful for. You're not quite sure you know.

Just like Jane's question, though, this is one you don't want to answer. He won't be alright—he's gone, whatever that might mean. You never saw someone quite like _that_ in the laboratory, but you know there really isn't any other explanation for _what_ caused _it_. And you also know that things just got a hell of a lot worse.


	2. The Best Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> proofread, edited, and updated on 1/21/2016

  **[12/12/31]**

**== > REWIND ELEVEN DAYS**

**== > BE THE ANGRY GENETICS MAJOR**

It's never been a secret that winters in Pennsylvania are icy. That's just a fucking fact—the farther north you go, the more the temperature drops. But only in the year since you trapped yourself hundreds of miles above the _temperate zone_ have you really started to understand what an east coast _cold_ actually means.

It's not _chilly,_ it's not _crisp_ It's so far removed from the moderately warm New Mexican Decembers you've spent home you might as well be on the other side of the world. No, a northeastern holiday season, you've discovered, is something much, _much_ worse. After dark, temperatures drop below single digit measures; thick snow piles up overnight _without warning_ ; and the electricity flickers every so often as slush-heavy tree limbs fall over power lines. In short, it's _Dante's fucking ninth circle of hell_ , a god-damned frozen demon wasteland. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't step outside.

As mildly upsetting as the discovery is, though, its blow is softened on your third day of winter break, when you find out for sure that you are, in fact, the last one left in your dorm building. Granted, this revelation takes an hour of running through every hall, Celine Dion's greatest hits belting from your lungs, but the sore throat is worth the satisfaction of complete, confirmed solitude. Every other student has made his or her way home for the four-week study sequester, off to bake caramelized hams and exchange gifts with friends and family alike, and you finally— _finally_ —have a chance to relax.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you are EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD, just at the cusp of adulthood but already aching for an INDEPENDANCE so far overdue. It's not as though you _don't_ have relatives to join this season—your older brother KANKRI has always done his best to ensure that you're taken care of, despite an upbringing devoid of any traditionally-parental influence. He'd chosen simplicity over complication, serenity over chaos as your primary lifestyle, both as a direct result of your economic standing and his own moral code. From your earliest memories onward, you and your big-hearted guardian have been spending every holiday on the road, travelling throughout familiar desertlands to spread the Vantas brand of seasonal cheer to those less fortunate—long-winded sermons and bad sandwiches included. It's an admirable mission, to be sure, but misguided (though well-intended) charity has always been your _brother’s_ calling, not yours.

You aren't heartless by any means—no. It's not a crime to want something for yourself, whether it be time or silence or a gently-used copy of _Left 4 Dead: 3_.

The television's droning voices shift, signaling the start of what you've been dreading for months, and you’re effectively pulled from your seasonal musings. You’ve taken it upon yourself to set up camp (the pillow fort you've been sleeping in for the past week is something you're rather proud of, maturity be _damned_ ) in the dorm's common room, as it's the only place in the building with working cable. The community Xbox, of course, is an additional welcome perk.

Now, however, a national news station’s telltale reds-whites-and-blues have replaced any sort of mindless entertainment on the screen, and, as you watch, the reporter's peppy spiel falters. She announces a live shift to her colleagues in New York, your least favorite place on earth.

Reluctantly, you uncurl from your cocoon of comforters and pillows just enough to really _see_ the broadcast, but, as soon as your former mentor steps up to the podium, you flip back around to stare at the ceiling. If there's one thing you _loathe_ more than the Empire State, it's the people who live there.

Like every other lucky bastard given the gift of a summer spent working with English Industries, you had been thrilled to receive your acceptance letter all those months ago. Perhaps even more so than most, given your status as a scholarship student—you had nothing to offer the company, you thought, monetarily, intellectually, or otherwise. Why the hell would they pick _you_? But your brother had, as usual, poked and prodded and congratulated and gushed over the phone like a fluffy mother hen, and—after several heated debates—convinced you to accept the admission despite your inhibitions. It had been something you'd only applied for on a whim, not expecting anything to come of the brief paperwork, and you were honestly a little uncertain about the whole thing. That's not to say you weren't grateful. No, just apprehensive.

Not that you would ever admit it, of course.

But the offer was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—an experience you couldn't refuse even if you really _had_ wanted to—and, with that in mind, your acceptance had been inevitable.

While science had always come easy to you, human interaction presented more of a challenge. You're an eternal third wheel—a professional people-watcher. The referee, but never a player. And, like college, you would be stepping through the EI property gates without an ally.

_"...nd countless lives, young and old, have been lost to unexpected contractions of the illness or a body's inability to handle the infection. Much like the common cold, pneumonia has been like a plague for generations, ever-changing, ever-kil..."_

You sigh, half tempted to block out the professionally-sculpted words of a man just as fake, but know you can't. This is _important_. This is _life changing_. This is _globally influential_. This is _horrible and dangerous and fuck this is wrong why didn't we do something and how is he smiling he—_

You scowl, exhaling through your nose as a few calming curses worm their way out from between clenched teeth.

You had met John on your first day in New York, at the orientation luncheon. Bubbly as always, he'd been deep in conversation with a group of students your age when you'd arrived—late, as usual. After receiving your room assignments weeks before arriving, the two of you had casually chatted online more than once, though your conversations never held much substance or lasted long. He would be a tolerable bunkmate, you had decided, so long as he stayed out of your way.

The minute he'd spotted your name tag, however, it was like you were suddenly the most important person in the world. Table discussion forgotten, he'd practically leapt up and tackled you in a crushing hug— _literally_ enveloped your entire body. You were easily two heads shorter, and half as wide. The boy wasn't large, but he had _certainly_ been built well.

Greetings were exchanged, and—after a pause just long enough for you to grunt _hello_ —he had picked back up again, waving his hands as he restarted whatever story you’d walked in on. He didn't seem to mind repeating,  and it wasn’t long before you were adding comments and interjections of your own, providing the snark his tales seemed to lack. He would laugh and tease back in a way that no one had ever done before. For once, someone other than your brother didn't shush your loud voice and profanity-filled metaphors. John was a good kid—the _best_ kid. And, after that, you were inseparable.

_"...ermanent solution that could not have been possible without the hard and dedicated work by both our own scientists and those from around the world who flocked to help in our rese..."_

As Doc Scratch continues to cheerily enunciate his words in a way that could put to shame _any_ infomercial announcer worth his salt, you slowly feel yourself falling deeper into the fog of perpetual irritation you like to carry with you wherever you go. No matter how many blanket shields you raise, you can still hear his voice, and, eventually, you decide you've had enough. The broadcast is, for sure, _momentous_ , but there's nothing your former mentor will say that you haven't heard before.

Instead of muting the volume, though, you chuck a stray pillow at the screen and growl when the monitor doesn't budge. As unfortunate as a broken TV would be, the destruction might have at least brightened your mood by a fraction.

You settle for a few unintelligible shouts thrown in its general direction, but for some reason that doesn't help much, either.

* * *

The rest of your evening is spent in relatively the same position, stillness only broken by few snack-hunting expeditions though the building, and before long you're settled in to watch a recorded HBO loop of _Midnight in Paris_. You've seen the movie at least a _hundred_ times before, though, so Owen Wilson's perfectly-coifed, blonde hair-swoosh barely holds your attention this runaround. In some pathetic attempt to distract yourself, you crack open your laptop and try fall into the familiar haze of mindless gaming. Predictably, it doesn’t do a thing. 

Your thoughts drift back to what is arguably the most important issue at hand, and soon you find yourself shifting through online news sources to see how everyone _else_ is reacting to the Doc's press conference. Or, so you tell yourself. Really, you just want to read the stupid little comments people post at the bottom of the articles. You _swear._

Still, the headlines are more than a little worrying.

Political leaders publicly proclaiming their support, EI representatives seen personally escorting shipments of the immunization across the globe, philanthropic celebrities financially backing deliveries to third world communities. Only in the dark recesses of the internet (forums and blogs and that kind of shit) do you find skeptics and realists. You can't help but send in a few anonymous messages aggressively supporting several outlandish conspiracy theorists, wanting to do _something_ but understanding the need to keep your identity secret. The list of interns was public knowledge, after all.

It's nearly midnight when your Pesterchum account pings, and an active chat window appears onscreen. The two hour time difference between Pennsylvania and New Mexico means that visiting hours for whatever facility your brother has been at today have just ended, and you'd bet your signed copy of _Eat, Pray, Love_ that he wants to talk about the only thing worth discussing this evening—and you don't mean the weather.

Despite the testy personality clash that _is_ your relationship, you can at least say that the two of you care about each other—and (even though you'd rather saw your own hand off than let him know) you're a little glad to hear from Kankri. One-sided conversations with paranoid internet essayists can only get you so far in the way of companionship, and, as much as you'd like to talk with your best friend, you know that he has his own family to worry about at the moment. It's still relatively early in Washington, after all.

— clericalCruciverbalist [CC] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 23:32 — 

CC: G99d evening, little 6rother.

CC: I h9pe y9u're d9ing well en9ugh 9n y9ur 9wn, this year. As I predicted, y9u have 6een s9rely missed by 69th myself and the Sacred Heart staff. Several l9ng-term Carpenter Shelter residents n9ted y9ur a6sence, as well.

CC: Assuming y9u haven't starved 9r fr9zen t9 death, my 9ffer 9f missi9nary c9mpani9nship still stands. Y9u kn9w y9u'll always 6e welc9med with 9pen arms, regardless 9f y9ur attitude.

CG: HOW ABOUT NO.

CC: I've 6een keeping an eye 9n the wea

CC: It's rude t9 interrupt, Karkat. Y9u c9uld see the little ic9n alerting y9u t9 the fact that I was still typing.

You sigh, trailing off into a groan of frustration for added dramatic effect, and scrub your face, waiting for Kankri to finish his original thought. Normally, you'd barge through and cut him off mid-ramble, but you don't have the energy tonight. Banter with your brother involves more brain power than any other sibling rivalry you've ever encountered, which something you're both impressed and horrified by. Still, you can't help but reap a fraction of comfort from the obnoxious, ripe-tomato text.

CC: I've 6een keeping an eye 9n the weather there, and it l99ks like y9u'll be experiencing an9ther wave 9f fr9zen rain within the next few days. I h9pe y9u've st9cked up 9n supplies, as it's likely the m9re experienced residents 9f y9ur area will have already started t9 prepare f9r the inevita6le l9ck-in.

CC: I w9uld als9 like t9 take this time t9 remind y9u that, in the likely case y9u are 6arricaded within y9ur 6uilding by extreme mete9r9l9gical phen9mena, take-9ut and delivery f99d 9pti9ns will n9t 6e available t9 y9u. And that scurvy is a very real possi6ility given b9uts 9f l9ng-term is9lati9n, regardless 9f l9cation 9r ec9n9mic sta6ility.

CG: AND I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO PAUSE A MOMENT AND EMPASIZE MY LEGAL STATUS AS AN INDEPENDENT POST-CHILD CAPABLE OF PERFECTLY ADEQUATE SELF-CARE.

CG: CLEARLY, I AM NOT LYING LIFELESS IN A HEAPING PILE OF MY OWN FLY-GATHERING FILTH, NOR HAVE I DIED FROM A LACK OF BODILY-REQUIRED CORE SUBSTANCES.

CG: I AM DOING FINE WITHOUT YOU.

CC: I can't help 6ut n9tice that y9u didn't use the term "adult" t9 descri6e y9urself. Perhaps y9u've finally ackn9wledged the fact that y9u lack the maturity t9 survive as a fully-gr9wn man in t9day's m9dern w9rld.

CC: In addition, the legal caps set 9n 9ne's ad9lescence mean n9thing in this 9r any 9ther c9ntext, as I kn9w y9u're quite aware. We've 6een 9ver this several times 6ef9re—s9ciety is a 6rutal place, and, f9r it's many faults and dangers, it is s9mething 9ne can only enter when truly ready.

CC: That is t9 say, whether 9ne has reached the eighteenth year mark, 9r n9t.

CG: YES, WE HAVE BEEN OVER THIS.

CG: WE HAVE BEEN SO OVER THIS, I'M MORE THAN POSITIVE GRAVITY HAS CEASED FUNCTIONING

CG: AND OUR OXYGEN-DEPRIVED, LIMP MEAT SACKS HAVE GONE CAREENING OUT OF ORBIT AND INTO SPACE.

CG: ALSO, I’M GOING IGNORE YOUR BLATANT VERBAL ATTACKS ON MY PERSON.

CC: I’m 9nly l99king 9ut f9r y9u, Karkat.

CG: THIS EXCHANGE OF USELESS SENTENCES IS, AS USUAL, A POINTLESS ATROCITY. AND, ALSO AS USUAL, THAT IS LARGELY YOUR FAULT.

CG: WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MESSAGE ME FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE? I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WAS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW MANY MONTHS I'VE BEEN ALIVE OR HOW MUCH YOU YEARN FOR MY PHYSICAL PRESENCE.

CG: I EXPECT MORE FROM YOU, KANKRI.

CC: Just as I expect m9re from y9u, little br9ther. Y9ur days 9f relative s9litude have n9t mell9wed y9ur temper, I see. That said, I have n9 intenti9n 9f lamenting y9ur age, simply y9ur level of civilized s9phisticati9n. Alth9ugh, I will deign t9 admit that 9ur traditi9nal h9liday dinner will 6e rather quiet this year.

CC: At the very least, y9u pr9vide m9re entertainment than m9st 9f the 9therwise mentally and physically unsta6le patr9ns y9u and I have enc9untered 9n our vari9us j9urneys.

CG: FOR ONCE, I WILL BE THE BIGGER PERSON HERE AND ADMIT THAT I'M UNSURE WHETHER OR NOT I WAS JUST LUMPED INTO THE SAME CATEGORY AS THE CRAZY PEOPLE YOU SPEND YOUR TIME WITH AND THEREBY INSULTED A SECOND TIME THIS EVENING.

CC: Y9ur insensitivity t9ward the medically-risky c9ntinues t9 ast9und me, little 6r9ther. "Crazy" is a 6rash, 6iased term, the use 9f which is n9t c9nd9ned in any sta6le, egalitarian s9ciety.

CG: OH MY GOD KANKRI WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

CG: YOUR VERY PRESENCE IS SLOWLY GIVING RISE TO AN AGONY THAT WILL SOON COMPLETELY CONSUME MY BRAIN.

CG: MAYBE THAT'S WHAT WILL FINALLY DO ME IN.

CG: WHAT A PAINFUL END THAT WILL BE.

CG: RUINATION BY LECTURE.

CG: YOU ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO ANNOY ME TO DEATH WITH YOUR WORDS. IT WILL HAPPEN.

CC: In truth, I was merely c9ncerned f9r y9ur current psych9l9gical state of 6eing. I am n9t s9 far rem9ved as to have missed y9ur scientific counsell9r's 6r9adcast, and, judging 6y y9ur actions 9ver the past several m9nths as a wh9le, am m9re than aware that he—al9ng with the c9mpany with which he ass9ciates—sets y9u quite 9n edge.

CC: And, 6efore y9u 9nce again interject with a series 9f rude, superflu9us gray letters, I can assure y9u that there is n9 need t9 reiterate the tale y9u relayed t9 me bef9re setting 9ff t9 the University. N9 further c9nvincing is currently—if ever—needed.

CC: As previ9usly stated, I d9 n9t believe y9u, but I d9 n9t d9u6t y9u, either.

CG: AND I STILL DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE WHAT THAT MEANS, BUT, AS LONG AS YOU'RE WILLING TO STEP OFF YOUR TALL HOOFBEAST FOR A SECOND AND TRUST ME, I'M NOT REALLY GOING TO QUESTION IT.

CG: THAT DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T HOPE YOU BREAK YOUR ARM OR SOMETHING WHEN YOU HIT THE GROUND, THOUGH.

CC: Despite 9ur differences, Karkat, we are family, and there are several 9ft-welc9med perks that ride 9n the coattails of this genetic relati9nship—9ne, 9f c9urse, falling int9 the particular categ9ry 9f mutual c9nfidence. Y9u have never 6een 9ne t9 lie, and, as much as y9ur st9ry resem6les a scene cut from s9me particularly terrible h9rr9r film, I cann9t help 6ut realize that there is g99d reas9n behind y9ur acti9ns.

CC: I will als9, h9wever, c9ncede t9 the p9int that y9ur f9rmer empl9yer's cl9se relati9nship with several untrustw9rthy g9vernment 9fficials makes me m9re than a 6it uneasy.

CG: BY SEVERAL YOU MEAN ALL, RIGHT?

CC: ...Current legislati9n has fallen 6y the wayside, I'm afraid.

CG: IF YOU HAD BEEN BORN SEVERAL GENERATIONS AGO, I AM MORE THAN CERTAIN YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF THOSE STUPID FLOWER CULTS THEY TEACH ABOUT IN HISTORY CLASSES.

CG: DOWN WITH THE HYPOTHETICAL LARGE-PICTURE MALE, AND ALL OF THAT.

CC: If y9u're implying I w9uld participate als9 in a hefty lack 9f self-gr99ming al9ngside mass hallucin9genic su6stance use, perhaps it is time we retraced the steps in 9ur familial 69nds and revisited every life experience we've ever shared. Ever.

CG: YOU COULD HAVE JUST WRITTEN "NO".

CC: A mere tw9-letter w9rd cann9t fully express the level 9f disdain I h9ld f9r y9ur 6aseless assumpti9ns and factless insinuati9ns regarding my—9r any—pers9n, speculative 9r 9therwise.

CG: "DO NOT JUDGE ME".

CC: Are y9u attempting t9 consolidate my 9therwise l9quaci9us statements? While brevity may be the s9ul of wit, little 6r9ther, there is n9thing even rem9tely amusing a69ut the em9ti9nal states of y9ur c9mpani9ns. Respect t9ward 9thers sh9uld, as always, remain y9ur t9p pri9rity when interacting s9cially. Y9ur insensitivity is ast9unding.

CG: I GIVE UP.

CG: TO REVISIT THE ACTUAL POINT OF THIS LONG-WINDED AND UNNECESSARILY RIDICULOUS VERBAL EXCHANGE, MY EMOTIONAL STATUS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A SICKENINGLY MEDIOCRE ONE-HUNDRED-AND-SEVENTEEN CHARACTER STATEMENT POSTED ONLINE BY AN OTHERWISE-UNSOCIAL TEENAGER.

CG: IT IS LIKE THE SMARTLY-PRESSED COLLAR OF A CRISP FORMAL DRESS JACKET, WORN BY SOME FAMOUS AND DASHINGLY HANDSOME INDIVIDUAL TO A FANCY SOIREE ALONGSIDE OTHER, EQUALLY ATTRACTIVE PERSONS.

CG: IN SHORT, I AM FINE.

CC: Ign9ring the 96vi9us fact that y9ur extensive metaph9rical use attaches tw9 widely-differing c9nn9tati9ns t9 the w9rd y9u've ch9sen t9 descri6e, I am at least s9mewhat warmed t9 hear that y9u are alright. Regardless, my fears have n9t 6een c9mpletely assuaged.

CC: Simply kn9w that I am and always will be n9thing m9re than a click away, sh9uld y9u need c9nversation.

CC: F9r n9w, it is late here—and even m9res9 in y9ur area 9f the c9untry. G99dnight, little 6r9ther.

— clericalCruciverbalist [CC] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 1:02 — 

CG: YEAH. GO TO FUCKING SLEEP. I HOPE YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS IS MILDLY ENTERTAINING.

— carcinoGeneticist [CG] disconnected at 1:02 — 

As always with your overly-verbose sibling, the conversation blasts through hours you could have spent numbly surfing the internet, much to your eternal exasperation. In the background, the single-movie marathon still plays on its endless loop, and you spend a solid fifteen minutes debating whether or not you should risk the chilly (room temperature) air to turn it off or stay wrapped in your fort. Somehow, in your flipping and settling, the remote has managed to slip out of reach. You never actually come to a decision before dozing off, and the film stays on.

Sleep, however, only lasts an hour or two—and, before you really realize that's happening, your own panicked whimpers jolt you awake. The nightmare is fleeting and fuzzy, already fading fast as you struggle against the blankets to _breathe_ , but an imaginary flash of gray behind your eyes is enough to make your chest hitch.

_"...at's what war does to men. And there's nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully. And th..."_

The last thing you think before flicking off the television is a rousing _fuck you, Hemingway_ , and you're suddenly plunged into darkness.

For most, self-imposed blindness would seem an almost ludicrous post-terror coping mechanism, but you've always felt at home in the night. Like your empty building, there's a comfort in the peaceful solitude lightlessness offers. It’s an assurance that your nightmares are simply that— _nightmares—_ because nothing ever _actually_ reaches out from the proverbial closet to get you. When the fluorescents are on, there are plenty of places for monsters to hide, but under the cover of darkness they have every opportunity to attack. You're trusting reality to confirm something you already know to be true, and—just as it has for _years_ —it comes through for you.

Tonight, yet again, you are safe from invisible monsters.

When your heartbeat finally slows, you scoot back around to your laptop and open it, squinting at the sudden glow. Your chat window is still logged in, and you can see John's name in the list of idle Chums—a quick glance at your clock tells you it's just before midnight in his time zone. Perfect. You've been waiting to talk with him for hours, and—even if he doesn't reply—you'll feel infinitely better after at least an attempt at communication. There are a few important things you need to discuss with your partner in crime, not the least of which was brought to the forefront of your mind by Kankri's rambling.

—  carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 2:47 — 

CG: HEY, DUMBASS.

CG: GET YOUR ASS ONLINE.

CG: NOW.

CG: WE NEED TO TALK. LIKE, SERIOUSLY TALK. WE NEED TO DISCUSS A REALLY FUCKING BIG ISSUE, AND WE NEED TO DO IT UNHINDERED BY THE USUAL SNARKY BULLSHIT YOU SOMEHOW BELIEVE ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTES TO ACTUAL REAL CONVERSATION.

CG: FUCK YOU.

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE THERE, JOHN.

EB: hey, karkat!

EB: what are you doing up so late?

EB: wait, that's a bad question.

EB: i don't think you ever sleep :)

As the conversation progresses, however, you find yourself more on edge than before. Thus far, you've done your best to stay relatively calm about the whole _thing_ , but now—trapped once again in the familiar cycle of insomnia and post-nightmare jitters—you feel yourself start to panic. Snarling screams and razor-blade teeth—is that the fate of every happy-go-lucky vaccination victim across the world? Men, women, children. Your classmates, your brother's homeless charges, the little Italian family who owns the bakery three blocks from Denny's.

 _Everyone_.

You don't sleep for another thirty-odd hours, at which point your subconscious is too exhausted to bother with fear-inspiring visions and you miss an entire day.

* * *

**[12/22/31]**

Just a week later, your nightmares come to life.

As Kankri (and various other, more credible meteorological resources) had predicted, it starts to snow not long after the Doc's press conference, and the barrage doesn't stopped until your building’s main door is almost entirely blocked off. Local radio stations call the ordeal a second Snowmageddon, and you have long since begun questioning whether or not it really _is_ a kind of apocalypse. God damn it, the earth should _never_ be this cold.

Eventually, though, a growing need for food drives you into the outside world for the first time in weeks. You're down to nothing more than a half-empty box of goldfish and a suspicious package of raisins found on your second day of solitude—hardly enough to live on. Thanks to your own neglect (and lack of a proper shovel), the dorm's entrance really _is_ sealed shut, barricaded by three feet of frozen-over slush, and you're forced to climb through a first floor window as a means of escape. A thick layer of ice ensures that you don't sink too far into the too-white mess, and soon you're loping along in twelve layers of clothing toward the small college town just outside the campus grounds.

As expected, everything is relatively quiet. Those who hadn't bothered traveling home for the season have locked themselves indoors for the last few pre-Christmas days, both on and off University property,  and though the sidewalks and streets have been plowed, almost no one is out. Unfortunately, this also means that most stores are closed, but you're lucky enough to find a small twenty-four-hour one-stop-shop with enough gumption to stay open despite the weather.

You get a surprised eyebrow-raise from a girl watching TV at the register, and glare in response, shoving both mittened hands in your pockets. You need to make the trip quick—get what you need and get out before you start overheating in the many layers of clothing necessary to brave frozen tundra. Or a December in Pennsylvania. To you, there's not much of a difference.

It doesn't take long to gather survival necessities (pre-packaged microwavable dinners, a tin of peanuts, and two tubs of chocolate ice cream) and, in record time, you're standing at the counter. You can hear your pillow fort calling from just over a mile away, and you're eager to return to sanctuary.

 _So_ eager, in fact, that you nearly miss the misplaced gasp of disbelief from the only other person you've encountered in weeks. When she drops your can of nuts, you zone back in on reality, fully intending to rant about customer service and respect for property, but the words die in your throat as you take in her expression. Sheer, unbridled shock—and it's not directed at you.

"What?" You hiss, but she jerks her head with wide eyes and motions you around the counter, not taking her gaze away from the dinky little television screen. By the time you move to where you can see the broadcast, she’s turned the volume higher and started muttering to herself.

"Oh my God, my parents. My sister. Oh, fuck. Fuck. _Me._ Shit."

_...is evening, there have been over six million reported hospitalizations as a result of what can only be the highly sought-after treatment, and the number is continually growi..._

Fuck, indeed.

Before you're fully aware of what’s happening, you've pulled your cell phone out and are dialing. When your brother answers, you realize you must have called him, and—when you hear a similar sound at your side—figure the lonely register girl must be doing the same with her family. 

"Kanrki. Kankri, are you watching this?"

"I am, indeed. All I can do is apologize, little brother. I more than believe your story now."

"Forget that, Kankri," your voice cracks up an octave, and you can feel the panic setting in. "It's happening. _It's happening_. Which means _everything else_ is going to happen, too. You're in fucking _prime_ territory—free clinics galore down there, and everyone willing to do what they can to survive. _Fuck_ , Kankri. _Fu—_ " as brilliant as your intellect is, your brain starts failing and you hear yourself devolve into a stream of incoherent cursing.

You're not sure if you called your brother for comfort or out of a subconscious realization that he is in easily _ten-times_ the danger you are if things start to escalate more than they already have, but you're beyond reasoning at this point. You're paralyzed, staring at the screen as footage of crowded hospitals and deserted workplaces flash by, and all you can think is _I'm such a coward why didn't I say anything we're all going to die it's happening this is it I could have warned everyone ho—_

" _Karkat_!" Your brother's shout through the phone line grounds you, and you realize then that you've started talking aloud. He _never_ yells, so you know that he's probably just as on-edge as you are—but managing _infinitely_ better at some semblance of calm. "I've had the feeling something like this was going to happen for a few days now, actually. We have had more than our fair share of collapses in the shelters."

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?" you hiss.

"Are you listening to yourself? Hysteria solves _nothing_ —it will only lead to more trouble, and, at the moment, that is precisely what we _do not_ need." The statement manages to pull your racing mind back, and you can't help but begrudgingly admire your brother in that moment. "You were the one who predicted this—you and that John fellow. More than I, you should be level-headed about the situation."

"Right. And I _am_. You're just projecting your own panic on _me_." Lies, and you both know it, but Kankri doesn't comment.

"Regardless," he hums, and you can hear even through the phone how on-edge it sounds, now, "you've explained to me more than once that you both drew out a contingency plan should an event like this occur." 

"The campsite."

"Precisely." Suddenly, there's a crash on the other end of the line, and you hear someone shout in the background. Kankri's voice, however, remains shockingly steady. You wonder, then, how much has been going on that you haven't been aware of in your isolation. "Call your friend once you've calmed down, and decide what you're going to do. I will, of course, default to your preferred course of action on these matters. Be safe, little brother."

He hangs up without waiting for your goodbye.

Numbly, you lock your phone and glance around, trying your hardest to control the gasps you belatedly realize are your own breaths. The shop is empty, now, so you assume the clerk has either left completely or holed herself up in the back to panic. You don’t particularly care either way.

Within seconds, though, your cell is buzzing again, and when you take a closer look at the screen you see that you've missed three calls from John over the course of your previous conversation. Before the last ring, though, you steel your nerves and press _accept_.

"John."

"Karkat, oh God, Karkat. Are you watching the news? Did you see this? Shit, Karkat I—"

Suddenly, you want to laugh as some horribly-detached part of your brain realizes that, no matter what, everyone freaks out in relatively the same way. Maybe you're finally losing your mind. "Chill the fuck out, John," you bite, sounding impressively confident despite what you're really feeling. "Shut up— _shoosh—_ and listen, because, now that this whole clusterfuck has gone national, things are going to be a hell of a lot harder. _Heaps_ more difficult. Problematic like a pubescent teenager's lunchtime boner."

There's a pause, and you don't realize you're holding your breath until John lets out a strained laugh and you finally exhale. "Whoa, dude—I so did _not_ need that mental image."

"Fuck you, I'm being serious. We need to get our shit together. All of it."

"...Yeah, okay," he forces out, and it takes you a moment to realize that you're doing for him what Kankri just managed for you. Suddenly, you're more focused than before—you have a mission.

"Unless the moment of brilliant intellectual triumph has slipped from your self-centered, junk-packed frontal lobe, I'm going to ask you now to recall several previous conversations that have suddenly become more than slightly relevant to the current, critical situation. Remember the strategies, John, and the exquisitely cunning mastermind behind them."

"Technically, most of it was my idea, anyway."

"Good, so you know what I'm talking about, then. You're not completely hopeless." You want to grin, because the emotional hole left by your frenzied terror is slowly filling up with confidence and determination. Coward though you are, you're going to _survive_ , damn it. You don't even bother arguing against your best friend's (unfortunately true) jab.

"But we didn't plan on you being so far _away,_ Karkat. You're still going to get here somehow, right? I mean, it might be kind of late to get a flight or something, but you have your car."

You don't bother mentioning that your crappy little four-door is currently blockaded on all sides by three feet of snow, and simply reply, "Yeah, as much as it's going to agonizingly rip me apart, atom by atom, to see your ass-ugly face again, we're going to ride this mess out together, just like we said. Who knows how many ignorant fuck-ups took the god damn _free_ needles? And this shit's _far_ from anywhere near over."

"...I should go tell my family, then," he sighs—no longer hyperventilating—and you congratulate yourself on a job well done.

"You do that."

"See you in a couple of days, Karkat. I _mean_ it." You roughly translate that to _get your ass here so I can stop worrying_ , and ready a scathing comeback just as he continues. "And stay out of trouble."

He sounds so sincere that you can't do more than growl out a, "Yeah, you too, fuckwad," and hang up.

* * *

 

When the register-girl doesn't reappear, you text your brother and take matters into your own hands, bagging everything you can carry. Canned vegetables to replace your frozen meals, three additional tins of nuts, and an entire cooler filled with water bottles are among your most notable purchases—as well as more pre-packaged food than you would otherwise know what to do with. You don't actually bother tallying up the total cost of it all, choosing instead to leave behind all the cash in your pockets (which, admittedly, isn't much) and your phone number scrawled on the back of a gum wrapper. On the other side, you write _CALL FOR COMPENSATION IF NECESSARY_ , and load up everything in double bags and the ice box, grabbing a snow shovel from the hardware section on your way out.

The walk back is significantly longer than you remember it being on your way into town, and, by the time you stop outside your dorm window, you've lost feeling in half of your entire body. The rolling ice box you pilfered weighs you down more than anything, as you quickly discover the wheels are useless across solidified slush, but—realizing you wouldn't have been able to otherwise carry your load—you power through.

It takes your lifeless fingers more than a few tries to pry open the building’s impromptu door, and you can't help but put your whole being into a sigh of relief as the wave of welcoming warmth hits you from inside. Peace doesn't last long, however, and soon you find yourself venturing back into the wilderness, shovel in hand.

The parking lot is a mess.

Actually, that's a lie—half of it is _pristine_. Not a single footprint, not a single path. Just a wide-open concrete flatland covered completely by a three-foot-thick layer of _pain_ and _sadness_. The rest, however, looks like it's been plowed though at least twice, despite the residual coating of white. Black-tinted snowdrifts line the edge around a particularly depressing area, half-blocking off the vehicles still parked. Your car is one of the few left—a number you can count on one hand—and you're unfortunately antisocial enough to have parked in the _very god damn back_ of the lot, where the snow is just as brilliantly-gleaming as ever.

Even if you _weren't_ standing foot-level with your driver's side window, digging through everything would take days. You need a new plan.

Nothing comes to mind.

Without much else to do, you clear off a spot on the roof of your crappy four-door and sit, pulling out your phone. The boundless wonders of the internet, you hope, will give you some answers—and, though it's not exactly what you're looking for, you end up reading through several poorly written _How To_ articles on the topic of unburying cars from frozen shit-piles. As it turns out, you only need to clear parts of the ice-covered ground, and your engine will do the rest. A novel concept. Suddenly, you want to hit your head against something solid—but a little voice in the back of your brain reminds you that you grew up in a freaking _desert_. You have an _excuse_ for being blatantly oblivious.

Regardless, you aren't built for hard labor. Indoor work is more your style, and your body certainly shows it. By the time the sun begins to set, you've only barely started to make some semblance of real progress on the rather impressive drifts, and you're forced to retreat before the temperatures drop further. Your dorm building is cozy and welcoming, and, after a sadly-lacking meal of ravioli straight from the can, you check your messages (still no word from the convenience store, thank goodness). An hour later, you curl into your fort for a fitful, exhausted sleep.

* * *

**[12/23/31]**  

You wake up just after dawn, stiff and hot and sore. Every muscle in your body screams at even the slightest movement, but can’t do a thing other than swallow too many Advil tablets and power through the pain. A few minutes are spared to catch up on the world news you missed while shoveling snow, and suddenly your mission seems that more urgent. Air transportation has been almost completely shut down, so you'll have to work fast before roadways follow suit—or, at least, the major highways.

When eight-thirty AM rolls around, you're already back outside, struggling to finish the work you started the day before. The early morning frozen dew doesn't do a thing to help matters along, but by late afternoon you're exhausted and _accomplished_. Praise the fucking _Lord_. Soon, you've showered and packed and warmed up the vehicle, and are finally ready to be on your way.

You don't bother taking down the fort.

Just as you're getting buckle in to leave, your cell buzzes, and you pray it's not the shop owner you practically _robbed_ the day before. Much to your full-bodied relief, it's only John, letting you know that he and his family have made it to your agreed-upon place of sanctuary. You let him know you're on your way.

You don't have to ask him for the address of the campsite, because it doesn't have one—and you both managed to figure out the relative latitude and longitude coordinates months ago. Those, of course, are plugged into your phone's GPS, and you finally pedal-to-the-metal it off campus with little to no fanfare. (It’s a little disappointing, really. Anticlimactic.)

The drive is long and tedious, but you knew that would be the case from the start. According to satellites overhead, you’ll arrive in Washington after three days on the road, given minimal breaks and barely-legal speeds—two, if you don't sleep; although that number rises again after you decide to travel only by back routes. On the main interstates, you run the risk of traveling alongside vaccination victims—and, should they suddenly decide to succumb to catatonia while driving, you could get yourself killed before making it even halfway across the country.

Also, you can drive as fast as you want through the mountains.

The journey, however, _does_ give you time to think, and—by the time your fuel light begins to flash for the first time—you've already gone through every possible worst-case scenario surrounding what will be your new home. Twice.

When you and John had first begun developing your contingency plan all those months ago, the whole scheme had started as a paranoia-fueled joke. A _ha-ha, we're now potential targets for a shady, government-funded organization with a questionable agenda; maybe we should go live in the woods and hide_ kind of thing. But, after actually pausing long enough to give the idea some thought, you had both agreed _some_ kind of backup strategy would be helpful to have. That was around the same time you realized things were infinitely bigger than just the two of you—a pair of scruffy, teenaged interns who had seen too much and couldn't do a thing about it. At the very least, you'd put your families in danger, and the vaccination had a guaranteed global release.

Hell, by the time you both arrive on scene, it had already passed the press-released testing stages with reportedly positive results. There was a _reason_ people hadn't heard of the basement lab and its contents. Shit would, inevitably, hit the fan, and you both knew you didn't want to be around when it did.

In your defense, you'd stuck pretty firmly to an isolated-cruise-ship-off-the-West-Coast idea. It had all the fixings of a great stronghold, but John had insisted that the location was far too challenging for others to reach. You had responded with a curt _that's the point, dumbass_ , but your best friend had, as usual, stayed firm. The mountains, he defended, were a better option. Somewhere cold—making survival difficult for the inexperienced and thereby upping your chances of staying hidden—and inconspicuous. Just another spot in the middle of nowhere, he said.

Somewhere like the random, probably-illegal log cabin his grandfather had built in a national park so far north parts of it crossed into freaking _Canada_.

You'd never been camping before—the "sleepovers" spent in Kankri's car while on the road don't count, you decide, as you're now old enough to realize they were his way of making you comfortable when he couldn't afford a hotel—but John had made the whole thing sound so damn _appealing_ (and practical) that you couldn't help but agree. The rest of your arrangements were built on that foundation over the subsequent weeks, and you compiled lists of important items, methods of transportation, locations, medical information. The whole nine yards. It was like you were hunkering down for a nuclear war, you had joked—but, now, you aren't sure just how far that was from the truth. There are still too many unknowns.

You make it halfway through Illinois before your vision starts to blur in the early morning darkness, and you fall asleep locked in an empty Walmart parking lot.

* * *

 

**[12/25/31]**

The next several days are relatively uneventful, the endless expanse of green-lined back roads broken only every few hundred miles by an occasional bathroom break. Your supply stash multiplies exponentially along the way with various rest station purchases, but, as you move farther west, the few marks of civilization that you _do_ pass become emptier and emptier. Kankri texts you on Christmas Eve, letting you know that he's managed to rendezvous with the Egberts, and John calls a few times to relay updates on the global situation. Keeping track of local FM radio stations while driving cross-country is nearly impossible, you discover, as broadcasts fade in and out as you pass through wavelength ranges at top speed.

You celebrate Christmas on the road, and treat yourself to a tub of ice cream stolen from yet another deserted _Stop-And-Go!_ mini-mart just a few hours away from your destination.

Or so you plan to, at least.

The fuel station is, like every other stop for the past four hundred miles, empty and dark when you pull in. Over the last forty-eight hours, you've come to truly appreciate the wonders of self-use gas pumps, and keeping your car on the go has been relatively easy thus far.

According to your best friend, the media is in a full-blown panic as government officials scramble to figure out some relatively reasonable course of action. World leaders, apparently, weren't above the vaccination, either, and twelve countries have almost completely collapsed into anarchy as nearly _all_ authority succumbs to catatonia. Or worse. Citizens of _everywhere_ have been advised to stay indoors for their own protection, but that doesn't stop closed hospitals from flooding with untreatable patients, or keep teenage rogues away from unguarded electronics stores. The quieter parts of the world, however, remain still as their small town residents hole up with family for what might be their last days of coherency.

When John tells you of his encounter with the man you've come to call "phase two" of the vaccination side effects, you have to pull over and heave on the side of the road. Suddenly, everything seems like a dream—like you’re living a horrible video game or starring in some emotionally-traumatizing HBO series. It was really happening. All of it. _All_ of it.

You take extra care to avoid human contact after that.

Halfway from the silent store with a partially-melted tub of Rocky Road Chip in hand, however, you're struck with the realization that even the best laid plans can go awry—because the left rear door of your car was _definitely_ closed when you left. And, unless you're suddenly having some sort of psychedelic out-of-body-experience, that is _definitely_ not you rummaging through the hard-earned hoard in your back seat.

"What the _hell_?" You yell before you have time to really think the situation through. "Get the _fuck_ out of my stuff!"

The assumption you're being robbed isn't a far-fetched one, really. The world is full of crummy scum who’ll always be willing to take advantage of chaos, no matter the suffering or what advice is given to save their own skins. From what you've heard, middle class urban areas are starting to look like Krystalnaught Germany as those looking to make a few extra bucks profit from the national house-arrest mandate.

You see the shape in your car freeze, and, for some reason, you feel like the world is holding its breath.

Two yellow lights suddenly appear in the window, and it's a moment before you realize that they're _eyes—_ but your second of hesitation is all it takes for everything to fall apart.

In an instant, the car door has been ripped off its hinges from the inside, and some _thing_ leaps out, hitting the gas pump in its attempt to reach you faster. Your body goes into overdrive, working on instincts you're not sure you _really_ have, and—before you know it—you're running, running, running in the opposite direction. Reentering the mini-mart would be suicidal, your brain tells you—you've got no way to barricade the broken-glass walls—and that _thing_ is currently between you and your car. The only choice you’re left with is to make a break for the tree-line and hope you don't die.

You really, _really_ hope you don't die.

A wet, inhuman snarl echoes off the gas station's metal overhang, and your legs start pumping faster than they've ever moved before.

* * *

 

You run until your feet go numb—until you lose feeling in your _entire_ lower body—but only when you start to hear the panic-fueled rhythm of blood pumping through your ears do you finally slow down. The ice cream, still clutched in your iron grip, has long since liquefied, and your hands and clothes are covered in the sticky, half-stiff mess. The package is crushed— you know you can't carry it with you forever, but you can't bring yourself to toss it aside just yet. All of your food is however-many miles behind you, and you're now stuck in the middle of the woods. You'll have to take what you can get.

After a while, you realize the only sounds you can hear are your own footsteps and the chirping animal noises you've come to associate with wildlife thanks to pre-recorded zoo intercoms. The _thing_ , thank _God_ , has stopped following you—or didn't pursue in the first place. You don't particularly care, so long as it's not near you _now_.

More than anything, you want to curl up and call your brother—or your best friend—but you know you can't. Not now. The sun has already started to set, and, soon it will be dark. Even if drug-induced humanoid monsters aren't on your tail, there are plenty of other things to hunt you alone in these northwestern woods. You need to find shelter as soon as possible. 

You don't.

Well, you _do_ find a place to crash, but it's not until much, much later—long after the moon has risen halfway into the sky and you've lost the ability to see more than two feet in front of you.

Sanctuary comes first in the form of a clearing. A wide, wide, wide open space where the starlight actually has a chance to do its job and brighten the night just a fraction. It takes you a moment to realize that the plain isn't just _any_ clearing, but a pasture, and _holy shit that rock just moved no it's a cow shit don't eat me_ _fuck wait wait cows are vegetarians_. You decide to ignore the large, barely-moving beasts and scamper through as quickly as possible. One thing is for sure, though—where there is livestock, there is civilization; and where there is civilization, there is shelter.

The obvious downside, of course, being that civilization _also_ means people, but you're too burned out and in pain to dwell on that unfortunate fact.

After an award-winning scamper across the field, you're sure to stay along the forest line without actually re-entering the woods. Though you can't see well, visibility in a never-ending string of manmade flatlands is infinitely better than under the canopy of evergreens, which is at least something. Few of the animals pay you any mind, so you're free to move about as you'd like, and it's not long before you come across a free-standing barn and silo. The whole thing looks so stereotypically picturesque you want to weep.

Rather than cry, though, you slip inside the already-open wooden barn doors and glance around. The place is old, but not _so_ old that it isn't still in use. Haphazard tacks of hay bales line one wall alongside a few plastic tubs of grain, and there are three or four massive John Deer machines you're sure will look just as terrifying in the daylight. There must be more than just animals on the property, you decide.

Just as expected of any self-respecting barn, the building has a straw-piled loft running around the perimeter of what would otherwise be its second story, and, within moments, you've scaled the ladder. The night is made infinitely colder by the sweat on your skin and your clothes are now uncomfortably crunchy, but, the moment your body hits the nature-made Cloud Nine, you’re dead to the world.

* * *

 

**[12/26/31]**

Sleep is fitful, and you wake up feeling worse than you did the evening before, much to your complete and utter dismay. When you eventually do begin to move, you peek outside one of the open, upper windows and take stock of your surroundings in daylight. In that direction, at least—the one you had been walking toward—there is no sign of the property's family home. For now—and hopefully until you make it to the campsite—you're alone.

That in mind, you pull out your phone. Thankfully, it managed to survive the entire ordeal, though the screen is more than a little caked with solidified ice cream gunk. You see immediately that you've missed a few calls from the people keeping tabs on your whereabouts, and your GPS is still running. Before you slipped out to the mini-mart, the little device had been plugged into your stereo, and—at the start of your mad dash—had likely been charged all the way. Now, however, you've got a little over three-fourths of your battery left, and no way to know how long that will last. Your mission suddenly levels-up seven urgency points, and you decide the faster you can meet up with the Egberts and your brother, the better.

Previously, you had been just a few hours out from your designated safe house—barely a hundred and fifty miles left out of three-fucking- _thousand_. You suppose that’s something to be thankful for—a ridiculously lucky plot twist in the script that _is_ your life—yet you still can't help but feel so damn _annoyed_ at everything, regardless of whatever unfortunate blessings you've been dealt. There's straw in your hair, you have to pee, and enough bugs to populate an _island_ have been attracted to the sweet scent of your Rocky Road cologne.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW opened private bulletin board FUCK YOU, SANTA 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board FUCK YOU, SANTA

CG: OKAY, BEFORE ANYONE SAYS ANYTHING I'M JUST GOING TO LAY DOWN THE RULE RIGHT NOW THAT NO ONE CAN RESPOND.

CG: I'M TRYING TO CONSERVE BATTERY LIFE ON MY PIECE-OF-SHIT CELL PHONE

CG: AND IF I TAKE THE TIME TO CALL EVERYONE OR ANSWER EVERY REPLY YOU DUMBASSES FEEL THE NEED TO ADD

CG: I'M GOING TO WASTE ALL OF MY POWER AND PROBABLY DIE ALONE IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE.

CG: SO, HERE'S THE DEAL

CG: I'M WALKING THE REST OF THE WAY.

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

EB: youre walking??

EB: karkat thats a stupid idea

CG: OH MY GOD EGBERT WHAT DID I JUST SAY

EB: we still have my dads car

EB: and your brothers car

EB: if something happened well come get you

You consider that for a moment, and suddenly feel very stupid—which only makes you angrier.

CG: YEAH, WELL, AT THIS VERY MOMENT IN THE RAGING SHITSTORM THAT IS MY VERY EXISTENCE

CG: THAT'S PROBABLY DEFINITELY VERY IMPOSSIBLE,

CG: CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE.

CG: YOU CAN'T DRIVE INTO THE WOODS, DUMBASS. OR ON FARMS. THAT'S STUPID.

clericalCruciverbalist [CC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CC: Then I w9uld advise that y9u re9rient y9urself via electr9nic p9siti9ning and make y9ur way t9ward the nearest easily-accessible r9adway. I will leave immediately t9 rendezv9us with y9u at 9r near an agreed-up9n l9cati9n.

EB: yeah i agree

EB: just worry about getting to somewhere we can reach you

EB: dont try braving the mountains or anything if you dont have to

CG: FINE. WHATEVER.

CG: JUST GET YOUR ASSES HERE YESTERDAY.

CC: May I ask what happened? Y9u can, at times, be quite ign9rant f9r a member of my genep99l, but I w9uld never g9 s9 far as t9 assume y9u w9uld intenti9nally je9pardize y9ur 9wn chances f9r survival.

CG: THE JOLLY FAT MAN'S HOLIDAY PACKAGE LABELED "TO: KARKAT" HAD SHARP TEETH.

CG: I PULLED THE DELICATELY-WRAPPED BOW OFF THAT SUCKER AND IT TRIED TO FUCKING EAT ME.

CG: ANYWAY, I TOLD YOU MORONS NOT TO ADD YOUR OWN COMMENTS.

CG banned EB from responding to memo

CG banned CC from responding to memo

CG: THERE.

CG: NOW, I'M GOING TO SEND YOUR ARMOR-LADEN, SHINY ASSES A SCREENSHOT OF THIS STUPID GPS

CG: BECAUSE I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO COHERENTLY ACCURATE METHOD OF DESCRIBING WHERE I AM.

CG: THE LAT AND LONG NUMBERS ARE ON THERE, TOO.

CG posted file "IMG_1621.jpg" to memo

CG: SEE YOU IN A FEW HOURS, YOU PAIR OF INSIPID DOUCEBAGS.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] closed memo.

You feel insanely refreshed after cursing out your loved ones, and, energy somewhat renewed, take the brief respite of elation as an opportunity to stand. After an indulgent moment of insect genocide, you descend once again from the loft to gather your bearings.

According to your cell phone, you _will_ have to cross back through the forest. In your fleet-footed escape the night before, you crossed a dozen or so miles west, but didn't actually succeed in getting much closer to your final destination. Today, you'll have to start heading upward, toward the nearest mountain road. By car, the task wouldn't be so daunting—but, on foot, the trip will easily take you a few hours, and you _still_ haven't had anything to eat. Regardless of time or energy level, though, you'll be wandering through the wilderness unprotected—which is more than a little worrying.

Thankfully, in that particular department, your options are _far_ from limited at the moment. In the sunlight, you can see the entirety of the barn's interior—and the deadly-looking equipment scattered throughout. Hoes, rakes, spades, a few bundles of metal piping, an axe, and three particularly-lethal shovels lie at your fingertips, and those are only the _manual_ tools you can see. For the sake of speed, though, you'll have to travel light, so many of the larger, mechanical contraptions immediately fall off your list of practical defenses.

Like any sensible young man about to face miles of unknown danger, you make a beeline for the axe. Sharp, sturdy, and mobile, it's the go-to choice for a weap—

The moment you grip the handle, you’re slapped in the face with the disappointing realization that this is _not_ going to work. It's a hefty piece of shit, and you've never been to a gym in your life. With that in hand, running would be a near impossibility, and you'll likely not get very far before you have to abandon it altogether. You're a _scientist_ , for Christ's sake—not a lumberjack.

You brood for a moment, and take stock of your other options before your periphery is unpleasantly blinded as the sun hits something just outside your vision. It's small and metal, burrowed in a pile of half-separated grain stalks. On further inspection, though, you can't help but grin. Fucking _perfect_. It's like a terrible sign from heaven—or hell, really, since grim reapers are generally known to do their dirty work with this kind of thing. You grip the scythe’s handle and swing it around for good measure.

 _Fuck yeah._ This will do nicely.

Suddenly, you feel a rush of confidence—you can fucking _do_ this shit. It's daylight, and, from what you've read, most of the mountain's worst predators are nocturnal. It'll be just like a hike. Some horribly-cliché trip out with your buddies, you think, glossing over the fact that you'll be completely alone in an unfamiliar state, miles away from any real civilization. Most guys your age were Boy Scouts as kids; you'll just be starting late, that's all. Nothing to worry about.

That in mind, you pull out your phone and start walking.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter! Neat. I'll try to keep updates consistently in a two-week timeframe, which will give me a week to write them and a week for my beta(s) to read through them. Special thanks to [nepetuh](http://nepetuh.tumblr.com/) for looking this chapter over! As always, feel free to check out my tumblr {[egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/)} to keep up with updates, etc. Thanks for reading!


	3. I Think I'm Dying

**  
[12/26/31]**

Your journey is slow-going and long, even with your cell phone's GPS to guide you. Despite the sun’s wonderful spot more than halfway into the sky, the world is still cold as _fuck_ , and you decide that having a best friend from Washington was a very, very stupid idea. Or, at least, the two of you should have chosen somewhere Southern for your hideout—the New Mexican deserts are pretty isolated, and it might make a little more sense to hunker down in plain sight.

Ignoring the fact that you would probably die, of course.

Thoughts of the dry, burning oven of your home state keep your mind, for the time being, off the fact that that you can't feel your lower limbs—likely the main reason your feet have decided to move so god damn _sluggishly_ —but the tricky, self-imposed mind games don't last long. Your imagination only seems to make it even more painfully obvious how utterly _freezing_ you are at the moment.

To keep out of sight as you walk, you stay by the pastures' edges between flatlands, moving in and out of the small wooded sections that separate fields along the way. You aren't sure whether or not you're still on the same property, but you _do_ know that you've seen more than enough livestock to last a lifetime. Still, even if several unpleasently-aggresive steers have noticed you, you've managed to stay well-enough out of sight for the most part. Thus far, no family homes have popped up, and—hopefully—things will stay that way. Still, that doesn't mean much here in farm country, you think. Eventually, someone is going to have to emerge from the wild, cornfield abyss and tend to these shitty four-legged creatures. You can't do much but hope you're long gone by then.

No matter how much your aching stomach disagrees.

The longer you walk, the dizzier you become. You've never been one to eat much, oftentimes getting lost in your work and simply _forgetting_ , so mild hunger isn't really a foreign feeling for you. On the other hand, however, the most exercise get in your life is walking across campus on a busy day, so you're fairly sure your body is going into a calorie-burning panic mode. All at once, you’re very, very grateful that your brother had enough sense to keep you fed back home. You hadn't been the wealthiest pair, but he had always made sure he took care of you. When you were younger, you’d gone to school with kids who could only get food from those shitty government-funded programs and could only eat during the week. You know you might have very easily joined them, had Kankri not made the sacrifices he did for your sake.

That train of thought distracts you long enough to realize that this particular patch of woods is more than a little longer than the past few you’ve wandered through, and you glance down at your phone. It doesn't show property lines, though, so you switch the screen briefly to satellite-imaging mode and see that you've reached the end of this week's episode of Washington Farm Showcase. The two-road intersection you're supposed to meet John and your brother on is still miles away. If possible, the temperature has dropped ten degrees in the shade, but the trees make up for their misgivings by protecting you from the wind. Not for the first time, you regret not grabbing a thicker coat before you left to raid the gas station.

At the speed of paint drying, you cross miles of underbrush and vines and trees, fielding the occasional text from either Kankri or John as they check your progress. From what they've said, you're a three or four hour _drive_ out from the campsite—not a distance you could have easily walked. You don't respond much, though, because your battery ticks closer to dead with every passing step. Without your GPS to guide you, you would be royally fucked, so you’re being more than a little cautious.

When an alert buzzes, warning that you've dropped below twenty percent of your total phone life, you make an executive decision to change course and meet up with the road earlier. It will take you longer to get to the intersection and you run the risk of being seen, but, if you lose your map in the middle of the woods, there's an almost guarantee that you'll get lost and freeze to death. Even now, you're pretty sure frostbite, and—if the sweltering heat in the center of your chest is anything to go by—the beginnings of hypothermia aren’t too far off on the horizon.

So, you backtrack, and emerge from the frozen foliage twenty minutes later onto a deserted, crumbling highway. It's one of those hardly-used routes that don't even have any painted lines, because it's only wide enough for a car and a half. The most traffic it probably gets is the occasional tractor or loose cow, which, under different circumstances, you might find really fucking funny.

Right now, though, you can't bring yourself to care.

The pavement, at least, is easier to walk on, and your pace picks up slightly. Without branches and roots to fight off, your leg muscles get a much needed break. Thankfully, you've only had to use the scythe once or twice to get yourself untangled from the underbrush—something that you could have done easily without the blade, had you been less exhausted—but the trek isn't over yet. Your hands, however, have long-since gone numb, and you can't help but switch the hand carrying it, swapping out your phone. Fuck, your fingernails are blue.

Without the rustle of your footsteps across the woodland floor, the world suddenly seems eerily silent. It's the dead of winter, so all sensible birds have turned-tail and flown south for a few months. Most of the larger animals, too, have likely hunkered down for hibernation. Despite the fact that there are bound to be a few small creatures, though, you've yet to see one. Heard them? Yes, from time to time. Rustling here, branch-snapping there. It set you completely on edge at first—you almost impaled yourself on a particularly nasty, low-hanging branch in your haste to run at one point—but you've since calmed down considerably. You think the cold seeping into your bones and slowing your brain processes is to blame for that, though.

Later, you'll also use this as your excuse for not noticing the growls until you’re being pulled to the pavement.

* * *

**== > BE THE PARANOID MEDICAL STUDENT**

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, as previously established, and you are VERY WORRIED. It's been just over an hour since you last heard from your best friend, despite the number of increasingly-panicked messages you've sent his way. Kankri, from the driver's seat of his ancient SUV, has assured you repeatedly that his brother is likely just trying to conserve power by not responding (or being a jerk), but you're not convinced. He looks anxious, too—you can tell by the way he's gripping the steering wheel, and the fact that your already-absurd speeds have increased just the slightest.

You're close, now—really, really close to the place Karkat had sent you. Part of you wants him to be there already when you arrive, so you can just scoop him into the back and turn around, but the other half doesn't want him standing in the cold that long. You know he's not used to it—you know he hates it.

You really hope he’s alright.

To distract yourself from thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong, you pull out your phone and text your cousin.

JOHN: hey jade! i know it's early where you are but i just wanted to see how you were doing.

JOHN: well, i don't actually know how early it is because i don't really know where you are.

JOHN: either way though it's earlier there than it is here.

JADE: hi john!!!

JADE: and dont worry were back on the island for now. i dont think were staying for long though. :(

JOHN: what why? that's stupid. you guys need to stay there where it's safe.

JADE: i think grandpa is worried about you guys

JADE: he still wants to go to washington even though they closed all the airports and stuff

JOHN: tell him no!! tell him i told you guys to stay put!! the last time we talked he made it sound like you guys were going to wait at home.

JOHN: things are way worse than you think and they're not going to get any better!

JADE: wait at home until what john??? i agree with grandpa on this one

JADE: you just said things were really bad and i know WE can make it through anything but the question here is can you???

JADE: i dont want to sit here with grandma and grandpa and jake in our big house with everything nice and warm while you and jane and your dad are stuck in that stupid cabin in the middle of nowhere while a bunch of bad things happen!! >:(

JOHN: we'll be fine jade. don't worry!! it'll just be like a big vacation or something.

JOHN: my friend and his brother are here too so it's not even just the three of us anymore.

JOHN: or well i'm actually going to pick up karkat right now so i guess just his brother is with us at the moment.

JADE: all the more reason for us to come up john!!! can you really take care of five people in that house forever??

JADE: the answer is no

JOHN: geez jade thanks for the vote of confidence i feel so much better now.

JOHN: also it’s not going to be forever!

JADE: im being serious!!! youre going to run out of food or someone is going to get hurt or youre going to get attacked by a bear and die!!!

JOHN: jade all of the bears are sleeping now. it's the middle of december.

JADE: thats not the point!! >:(

JOHN: and we will be just fine if someone gets hurt because in case you forgot i am studying to be a doctor.

JADE: >:((((((((

JADE: do you see how frustrated with you i am john?? do you see it? and dont think i didnt notice how you stupidly avoided my VERY TRUE comment about food

JOHN: we'll be fine jade gosh! i'm going to call grandpa now and talk to him though.

JOHN: we agreed that he would keep you guys out of trouble!!

JADE: john that is very stupid and you should not do that because we can handle trouble 50000% better than you can

JOHN: wow i really don't need this to turn into another lecture about how boring my life is compared to yours, miss adventure queen.

JADE: but its true!!! what if you run out of food though seriously???

JADE: you said you cant go back into the city and i just want to let you know that the grocery store is probably in the city!

JADE: are you going to know how to hunt or keep warm when it snows (because you are in washington and it will probably definitely snow soon if it hasnt already) or any of that important stuff??

JADE: DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW TO START A FIRE WITHOUT MATCHES??

JOHN: yes i do oh my gosh jade shhhhhhh

JOHN: i'm still going to call grandpa though even if you have some valid points.

JOHN: and i might be a little worried now because i guess i didn't think that far ahead.

JOHN: we really don't know how long we're going to be here and there are a lot of things that could go wrong.

JADE: im glad youre finally seeing it my way!!

JOHN: i'm not saying you should come though!! because you definitely shouldn't. that would be really stupid.

You're halfway through typing another message when you feel Kankri slam on the breaks, cursing uncharacteristically all the while. Your weight, already instinctively counterbalanced to go with the winding mountain road turns, shifts without warning, and you hit the dashboard with twice the force you would have otherwise. Thank God for seatbelts, you think, because—otherwise—your head might be through the windshield right about now. Your phone, however, is not so lucky, and the screen goes black when it flies from your hand and slams against the glove compartment.

"What the _hell_ , Kankri?" You wail, fumbling with the buckle. It's gone into safety-mode, and you're having trouble breathing as it presses you back against the seat. There will definitely be bruises all over your chest later. Kankri doesn't answer, though—his eyes are fixed on something in the road ahead of you, so you glance up

and immediately want to vomit.

You've been training in pre-med for a year and a half, now, and worked at the local hospital for even longer. Since your sophomore year summer, you've seen more car crash and street violence and freak accident victims than you can count, and you had to get used to the sight of blood and gore fairly quickly to be of any use to _anyone_ in the professional field.

This, though— _this_ looks like someone took a scene from some horrible slasher film and made stuck it in reality. 

Burgundy sludge pools on the concrete under slashed, crumpled corpses and stray limbs. It's darker in some places—almost black—and lighter in others, a deep red that reminds you of the quarterly clinic blood drives, smeared in streaks and drips even where there are no bodies.

_Holy shit those are people oh my god what happened here are they okay are—_

Kankri throws open the driver-side door to retch, and, when he does, you're hit with a wave of _the smell_.

It takes all of your willpower not to empty your stomach right then and there, but you still find yourself gagging. The mess is still a few dozen feet away, but, from what you can see, the carnage is fairly isolated, centered around a green pickup pulled off to the side of the road. The car looks like it had come from the opposite direction, so it's facing you. The driver and passenger seats look empty.

You hear Kankri's heaves taper off into wet coughs, and know that he's just about finished. Good. You want to get out of here, because if there's a _Scream_ -grade serial killer roaming out here, you want to find Karkat before he or she does. Everything is still shiny and liquid, so you know this didn't happen long ago.

But should you call the police? Would they even answer? Should you go and check to see if there are any survivors? You're a doctor, damn it! Or, at least, training to be one. It's your duty to tend to the wounded!

Maybe you're going into shock, you think, because for some reason you can still think rationally. Which should _not_ be a thing that is happening.

"Oh my God," Kankri mutters next to you, slumping against the steering wheel. You wonder if he's going to be sick again—he couldn't drive if that were the case. Is that the case? Do you have to drive? You really don’t want to drive, because that would mean getting out of the car to switch seats and you'd have to walk near it and possibly step in some of it and _oh my God no no no no not okay nononono—_

You feel your chest seize up and ah, yes— _there's_ that lovely feeling of sheer, unadulterated _panic_ you've become quite friendly with over the past six months.

Out of the corner of your eye, there’s movement, and you want to scream, thinking it's the guy who did this. Or gal. (You know from experience that girls can be really fucking scary when they want to be). _It_ shifts again, though, and you focus on the inside of the pickup—it's one of those four-door models, you notice. There's something between the two front seats, though, flapping back and forth. Waving?

It's a hand.

Someone is still alive.

In a whirlwind, split-second decision, you grit your teeth and pry open the door, ignoring Kankri's yelped protests. With the way the world is now, there's no telling when—or even _if_ —help will arrive in the case you decide to call the local authorities. The area is large, too, and sparsely populated—there likely aren't rescue squads stationed less than fifty miles away in any direction. You just really, really hope that whoever is in the car _isn't_ the person who might possibly want to kill you.

You jog a little, trying your hardest not to stop and hurl, but, as you get closer, you notice something very, _very_ wrong.

At first, you think it’s the light—the sun has been behind some particularly hefty clouds for a while, now, to the point where the world is dim and you're afraid it might rain. But, as you approach, you realize that even shade couldn't make skin look that ashen. That _gray_.

You pass a mangled man lying on his back, and see black sludge, like blood, leaking out of a rip in his stomach and dripping from his mouth—his mouth filled with two rows of _pointed fucking teeth_.

For a moment, your heart stops, and you break into a sprint.

Whoever is in the car was ambushed by these things like you were, back home. _Things_ , you think, because they don’t really even look like people anymore. Maybe they were campers at one point, and found their way to the road after they went nuts. There are a ton of them, though—your brain counts at least six different heads. But the point is that the person still in the pickup _survived_ this shitty mess. And maybe even caused all the damage.

You really don't want to think about how, though.

Your sneakers slip a little on the slick concrete when you finally reach the driver's side passenger door and yank on the handle. It doesn't give, though, and you realize just in time to see the hand from earlier appear in the window and fumble with the little tab on the sill that it's locked. Small fingers pull up the bar and your heart jumps when they disappear, leaving dark streaks on the glass.

Someone inside pushes just as you pull, so you end up stumbling a bit at how easily it swings open. You don't hit the ground, though, because the same hand you've been following like a white rabbit for the past five minutes grabs the front of your shirt and yanks you up, caking your shirt with some kind of horrible, half-congealed burgundy smudge.

"Help him," you hear a hoarse voice plead before you have time to properly gather your bearings, and you glance up, locking eyes with a girl barely your age. She has short-cropped, dark hair that's matted down to her forehead with the same shit sticking on her fingers, and her wide, olive eyes are leaking tears that you don't think she realizes she's shedding. You're caught off guard by how tiny she looks, wedged on the floor in that cramped space between the back of the driver's seat and the extra passenger spots. " _Help him_ ," she repeats, more forcefully this time, and she shakes you a bit by the collar to get your attention.

Only then to you take a good, hard look at _all_ of her—clothes torn, covered in blood and who knows what else, and curled over the too-still body of your best friend.

* * *

It takes more than a little coaxing to get her out of the car, and, when she finally manages to slide out, her legs buckle. You're quick to catch her before she hits the ground, though, returning the favor from earlier and easing her down. You call for Kankri, then, and turn back to the body still sprawled on the floor.

You can see right away that Karkat is too big for the space he's been shoved in, and you hope the strange angles of his legs don't cause any severe damage. As carefully as you can, you climb further in and pull him up onto the back seats, spreading him flat before you take a firm grip under his arms and slide out. You remember him being thin when you last met up, all those months ago, but you think he's gotten even skinnier since then. He weighs next to nothing, and you wonder if he's been taking proper care of himself.

There's a strangled yelp behind you, and you turn to catch sight of Kankri kneeling next to the girl on the ground, staring up at his brother with the most horrified expression you think you've ever seen a person wear—and you've worked in the ER before, so you have more than a few instances tucked away for reference.

As gently as you can, you sweep your hand under Karkat's legs before he flops bodily out of the vehicle, and carry him out to a cleaner area of the pavement. The girl scrambles after you, stumbling a bit, and that breaks Kankri out of his stupor. Within seconds, they're both beside you, each supporting the other, as you press your fingers against Karkat's wrist and attempt to find a pulse (because _shit_ you can't feel him breathing).

There's nothing.

 _Fuck_.

Immediately, you press your head to his chest and relocate your fingers to his neck, hoping, hoping, hoping you were just missing it in your nervousness. Your hands are shaking, after all—you could have made a mistake.

Apparently, you did.

It's faint—so freaking _light_ —but you can feel the barely-there beat against your hand and holy shit you could just _cry_.

But you don't, because tears won't help anyone. You let out a sagging sigh of relief, and will away all of your worry and emotions with it. You can't be John, now. You have to be Mr. Egbert, head volunteer in the Edgewood Community Hospital Trauma Center—cool, calm, and collected under pressure. You have to be the man you've been practicing in front of the mirror, because, if you aren't, you'll lose someone very important to you.

"Kankri," you don't look up, choosing instead to start ripping at the holes already torn in Karkat's t-shirt. "Get me the first aid kit and as many bottles of water as you can carry from your car." Whether he responds or not, you don't know, because you've already focused your attention back on the body in front of you.

It takes longer than you had anticipated to get his top off, both because of the lack of buttons and the fact that most of the blood soaked through it has begun to harden, fusing the fabric to his skin. Eventually, you settle for cutting through it with the pocketknife your dad gave you before you left, and slice through the seams of both it and his jeans as you try not to think about how much liquid life is coating everything—including, now, yourself.

Mostly-naked, you're able to get a good look at his wounds. You know you'll have to be quick, because the temperature is rapidly dropping and you can already feel that Karkat is freezing cold. The drive back to the cabin is too long to simply load him up without cleaning the extensive injuries you can now see, though. Shit, it looks like he's been attacked by a wild animal.

Glancing around, you realize that assumption is probably not far off.

His torso and sides are littered with scratches deep enough to make you say a little prayer to every deity you can think of—realistic or otherwise—that he has no internal damage. The claw marks (because _oh fuck_ you can't think of anything else that would make that happen) continue all the way down his legs on either side, but the front of his body seems to have missed the brunt of the damage. Your friend's back, however, is a completely different story—it's _shredded_ , to the point where you're nearly positive you can see the white bones of his ribs and shoulders every so often. Here and there, you also spot rings of unnaturally deep puncture-mark-surrounded tears, and you've helped your extended family bring home big game enough to recognize bite marks when you see them.

Because his back is the worst, you do your best to gently turn him on his front so you can have easy access to the damage. It's right about then that you hear Kankri return, if only by the sound of his gasps and wet curses. He might be crying, but that's not really your concern at the moment. The medical kit _does_ , however, appear in your peripheral vision, along with the water, and you're quick to grab the second. Your current environment is much less than ideal, but you _have_ to clean the wounds now. Already, infection might be setting in, and there's an actual guarantee that will happen if you wait until you've returned to the cabin to do it.

Carefully, you open a few bottles and pour them over the Karkat’s back, washing off the blood and dirt and sweat and whatever else he's caked with. You're short any sort of towel or rag, so you end up taking off your hoodie and using that to soak up what you can't get with the just water. You repeat the process for any other spots you can get to, and end up going through almost an entire case of Deer Park in the process.

Meanwhile, you wave Kankri to attention and tell him to check the girl for injuries, too. She has a few scratches, you discover, but they're nothing on the scale of Karkat's wounds. Soon enough, she's bandaged up and watching intently, while your friend's brother hovers and frets and just generally makes you nervous.

Through it all, Karkat doesn't so much as stir—not even when you pour half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide disinfectant across his back, which, in theory, should hurt like a bitch—and that worries you more than anything. He'll need stitches—hundreds of stitches—but you don't have the material for that at the moment. The only thing you _can_ do is wrap him up in gauze, though that, in itself, becomes something of a problem. First aid kits aren't meant to handle full-body trauma, and you had already taken some of the supplies to help the girl. You do what you can, though, and pull off your own t-shirt to cut strips of it for the rest. Kankri offers his, but you shake your head—he's wearing a thick wool sweater, and the fibers would only stick to and irritate the damage.

Over an hour after you find the pair, you're finally ready to head back to the campsite, and you situate your best friend in the back seat under a mound of blankets to keep him warm. Wetting him down in below-freezing temperatures was probably one of the worst things you could have done to his already-freezing body, but you didn't have much choice. The girl slides in next to him after gathering some things from her car, and promises to keep him tightly wrapped during the journey.

No one says anything, so you try to ignore the churning in your stomach as Kankri turns the car around, the whole thing jolting when he plows over something.

* * *

The drive continues on like that, tense and silent, before the girl finally speaks up. Her voice is still raspy and shallow, and you make a mental note to check her throat for damage when you finally stop. "Thank you."

You shake your head, "Nah, thank _you_. I don't really know what happened, but, I _do_ know Karkat. He probably got himself into some kind of stupid trouble before you swooped in. We didn't think there’d be anyone out here for miles, though—and, judging by those battle scars he’ll be strutting around later, he was the first one to get involved with those freaks." It occurs to you, then, that you have a stranger in the car, and you decided days ago to _avoid_ those. You have no idea whether or not she had taken the vaccine while it was available, and bringing her back to camp could prove a huge risk if she goes postal at some point in time. You turn around quickly, then, and look her dead in the eyes. She had been about to say something, but her petite mouth snaps shut immediately. "Did you ever get that English thing they were passing out up until a few days ago? The pneumonia injection?"

After a beat of hesitation, she slowly nods, and you curse.

"I'm going to die, right?" she asks a little too calmly for your liking, and, at the sound of her slight slur, you make a second mental memo to check her over for a concussion later, too. "I'm not stupid—I watch the news and stuff. They're saying that most of the people who got it start going crazy... or something."

"Technically, that isn't dying," you reply quietly.

"Yeah, but those people that were all over him—trying to _eat_ him or something—” she gestures to Karkat, “they're what happens if you get it, right? That's what I'm going to turn into at some point?"

Instead of answering her, though, you latch on to that tidbit of information and try to change the subject. You don't know what you're going to do, now, though, because things have suddenly gotten a bit more complicated. You need time to think. "What happened, exactly...?" Oh, you don't know her name, either. "I'm John, by the way. And this is Kankri, Karkat's brother."

Her eyebrows shoot up at that, but she nods again, "My name's Nepeta. I guess you're the people he was waiting for, then?"

"He told you?"

"No," she shakes her head, "before he passed out, he just kept saying that we couldn't leave and showing me this picture on his phone. Couldn't think of any other reason he'd want to stick around, so I guess it makes sense that you guys showed up."

"Maybe you should start at the beginning? We were actually supposed to pick him up, like, a couple of miles farther down the road. I don't know what he was going this far back."

Nepeta shrugs. "There's not really much to tell," and she curls up, then, wrapping her arms around her legs with a shake of her head. "I was driving down this way to meet my sister, and all of a sudden I turn that stupid corner and see this group of people all gathered on the side of the road, kneelin' down over something. I thought they might've needed help or something, you know? So I pulled over and rolled my window down and _wham_ , they start yanking me through my window an—" without warning, she breaks into a fit of coughing, and covers her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket. You can't help but notice the stain left behind when she pulls it away, but some part of your mind argues that she's _covered_ in dirt, so the black liquid might have already been on the fabric beforehand. Blood can't be that color, after all.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, fine." She doesn't elaborate further, and, instead, continues. "Anyway, yeah—they were all crowded around this kid," she gestures again to Karkat, "and trying to get me, too, so I figured I could always plead self-defense in court."

There’s a pause, then, before Kankri speaks up, eyes wide in the rear-view mirror. " _You_ did all that?"

She doesn't look happy, though, as she nods. "'M small, but my sister taught me how to handle myself."

"Most people would take that statement and assume you mean a few years of tae-kwon-do in middle school, not... whatever _that_ was," you reply quietly.

She snorts, which starts another brief coughing spell, and you wait as patiently as you can for her to continue. "M’ full name's Nepeta Leijon, s—"

"Like the big cat lady who used to be on Animal Planet?"

"Yeah," she smiles for the first time since you've seen her, and, even though it's not much more than a tired little upturn of her lips, you can't help but think she looks kind of cute when she does it. She reminds you of Jane, even though she’s probably your age. "Something like that."

There's another bout of silence after that, and you take the time to process past the fact that you've got the sister of a celebrity in your friend's car—or, rather, an ex-celebrity. Meulin Leijon fell off the television map after an accident that left her deaf, but you're sure more than a few people from your generation remember sitting for episodes of her nature show. Saturday mornings were always more interesting when you could eat your cereal and watch a petite young woman wrestle tigers to the ground.

* * *

The drive back takes considerably longer than it did coming the other way, but you can't tell if that's because you're so high-strung or Kankri has decided to drive _extremely_ slowly. Likely, it's the former, which annoys you more than a little—but you can't relax! Not yet. Not for a while, really, if ever.

Three and a half hours pass uneventfully, and you find yourself phasing in and out of a dazed consciousness as you struggle to stay awake. Whenever you do slip into sleep, though, it's fitful and restless, and you find yourself waking even more tired than you were before. In the backseat, you see Nepeta struggling with a similar problem, constantly shifting and dozing, unable to stay asleep for long before her clogged lungs decide to jolt her up.

Now, you see that she has pulled one of the blankets wrapped around Karkat, tucking her bare feet underneath it with him. She must be cold, you decide, so you turn up the heat a little bit. When you look back a few minutes later, though, you see that she's broken out in a sweat—not a good sign. As you watch, her eyelids scrunch and she hacks again. And again. And again. And again.

And again and again and again and—

She sits up, curling in on herself as she starts gasping, gasping, gasping, unable to get any air into her chest as coughs continue to wrack her tiny frame.

"Kankri—Kankri, pull over _now_." You hiss, and you're already unbuckling your seat belt and climbing over the middle compartment to sit next to her. "Calm down, Nepeta. Hold on," you say, putting one hand on her shoulder and the other on her back, patting gently. Her futile breathes ease up again, and she breaks into another fit of barking wheezes. You take the hand on her back and pound _hard_ , twice, and you hear her throat gurgle and crack just in time to open the car door and twist her body outward. Suddenly, a black sludge you weren't expecting comes dribbling out of her mouth, pouring through her teeth and puddling on the still-barely-moving pavement below. You pull her hair back as she heaves, slowly coming to the realization that whatever control you _thought_ you had over the situation is quickly fading away.

Because in the sunlight, you can see that Nepeta's skin isn't so tan anymore.

It's not gray yet, really, but you've never seen anyone look quite so ashen before.

In that moment, you become very, very frightened.

"Is she okay?" You hear Kankri ask, but you don't answer.

After a few minutes, the girl's lungs have emptied enough, and she stops choking up the freaky, unidentifiable substance you'd seen ooze out of the massacred bodies a hundred miles back. You sit with her for another moment, rubbing her back and helping her sip water, trying not to think about it. About _anything_. But as you're climbing back into your seat, she looks you dead in the eyes and you feel your breath catch—because you swear her whites are seem a little darker. A little more... yellow.

"John?" she says, and it's so quiet you can barely hear it. "John, I really do think I'm dying.” Kankri’s breath hitches. “Can you do me a favor?" Stiffly, you nod, because there's not much else you _can_ do, no matter how much you want to be able to save her. At least she knows what's going on—at least you don't have to tell her. She's being awfully calm about the whole thing, though, which you can't help but admire. "Can you get in touch with my sister somehow? And tell her all that cheesy stuff you're supposed to tell the people you love before you go up to heaven?" You know the broken smile you give her is small, but it's completely genuine. And sad.

You hate sad smiles. They feel wrong.

She seems satisfied, though, and closes her eyes again. There's not long left of the drive, but, as everyone lapses into silence again, you can't help but force your mind to wander elsewhere.

Despite everything you know about the English drug, you haven't found any sort of practical way to reverse its effects. The information you've been able to gather over the past few months is scarce and biased, mostly because the kinds of things you were looking for weren't open for public consumption. But the information you _do_ have is straight from the source, you're lucky enough to admit. All of those late nights spent browsing through the EI record labs after-hours paid off in more ways than you could have imagined, and, when it was all said and done, you ended up with more than just a few top-notch study guides for school.

Like any other vaccination, the chemical compounds are administered directly into the bloodstream though an injection. _Unlike_ them, however, the stuff will then find its way into the brain and, from there, directly target the lungs. Beyond what you handled yourself, though, you feel like you know too much and not enough—most of what you know seems irrelevant, because you've been questioning the truth behind everything you hear for months. Even now, you're learning new things, but you aren't sure where the puzzle pieces fit into the grand scheme of what’s happening.

From what you’ve seen, though, the _blood_ is the root cause of this whole problem. Both the black sludge that’s somehow finding its way through Nepeta's body, and the red stuff that flows through your veins. _That_ is the shit that's going first—or, at least, it’s the first visible sign that you can tell. You're not naive enough to think a good-ol'-fashioned colonial bleed-out is the answer, but, at this point, it’s not worth it to overlook _anything_.

Nepeta, however, is an anomaly. And that's more than a little worrying. Every other case you've followed over the past few days has been the same: patient gets vaccine, falls into coma, and wakes up a razor-blade-toothed mess. The girl in the backseat, though, has been as active as ever, and completely unaffected until earlier this afternoon—at which point the side effects started rapidly setting in. You wonder, then, if some part of the formula behaves like AIDS, because she spent more than enough time getting the bodily fluids of the fallen smeared into her open wounds.

And so did Karkat, for that matter.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

_Shit._

You don't want to jump to any conclusions, but you've got enough knowledge and experience under your belt to realize that you just might be _royally fucked._ By the end of the day, you could quite possibly have two raging monsters in your care. Two raging monsters that you have no idea how to help—two raging monsters that you might have to kill. Suddenly, for the umpteenth time since you woke up, you feel sick—because, when you turn around to stare down the head of black hair you can barely see poking up out of the mound of blankets, you wonder if you're imagining the dollops of black dripping out from between his lips

The car slows, and, when you glance out the window, you sag with relief—Kankri's pulling off the main road, onto the trail. There are no streets that lead up to your cabin, but over the years your many visits have pounded a path into the underbrush that your grandfather cleared years before you were born. You're getting close, now.

There's a cough from the back seat that isn't Nepeta's, but, when you glance in the mirror, you see that Karkat is still relatively out of it. He hasn't woken up, but he's slowly stirring. You're not sure how you feel about that.

When Kankri's stupid car pulls up outside of the little one-room, studio-style structure you're currently calling home, the rest of your family is waiting outside, ready with smiles and hugs for someone they've never met. It's evening, now, so you're fairly sure there's dinner waiting inside, as well. You can't relax yet, though—you still have to finish treating Karkat’s wounds, and check over Nepeta one more time. Even if they're going to lose their minds soon, one of them is still your best friend, and the other saved (or tried to) his life—you owe her. So you wave to your dad when the car stops and hop out, opening the back door to start untangling Karkat from his nest. Thankfully, he seems to have warmed up, from what you can tell—but as you slowly reveal more of his skin you want to run, run, _run_ far away.

Because while Nepeta's body is only slightly tinted, you can see, now, that Karkat is a full-on _slate_. In the darkness of the car, it had been hard to tell against his usual deep tan, but now you can see that he's fading faster than you had anticipated—especially considering the fact that he hadn’t gotten the vaccine in the first place.

Your brain shuts down again, and you start moving on autopilot as you scoop him up and turn around. Dad, who had been on his way toward you (you can practically hear the question about your sparse state of dress on his lips) freezes, but you don't say anything as you nod in his direction and continue inside. Nepeta and Kankri trail in after you as you lay Karkat on the small sofa and set to work, unwrapping his makeshift bandages. They're blood-soaked and heavy, but none of it is red.

"I'm going to need some water—warm water," you say to no one in particular. "And a towel or something." The messenger bag full of hospital-pilfered supplies is in one of the cabinets, so you pull that out and start rummaging for a needle and thread. It's going to be a long evening.

* * *

It takes an eternity to sew up all of his wounds, and, in that time, Nepeta throws up twice before passing out just as you finish checking her over, too. The situation is explained as best it can be, and, now, you're sitting around the dinner table with your fingers wrapped around a much-needed mug of coffee. You've never been more thankful for your grandpa and the generator he hooked up to the cabin when you were ten.

Jane has long-since fallen asleep, and you're left discussing what to do with your dad and Kankri—the latter of whom looks even more on-edge than you are. You suppose that's understandable, though. His brother—his _only family_ —is dying. Probably will die.

"And there's—" his voice breaks, cracking with unshed tears. "There is not a thing you can do to assist him? To prolong... whatever it is that might be happening within his body?"

"You're asking me to stall the stuff running through his system?" You reply, sighing. "I don't even know where to star—"

Kankri cuts you off, slamming a palm on the table so hard your glasses shake. "I know you both had hands in that laboratory for months, John. _Months_. And there's nothing you can glean from that knowledge to help even in the slightest?" You don't think he's even listening to you anymore. "Do you care about him at _all_?"

"That's bullshit, Kankri, and you know it—he's my _best friend_ ," Your shout back. "We went through some heavy stuff together, alright? So don't you _dare_ tell me I don't _care_. _You_ wouldn't even _be_ here if I didn't care." He glares at you from across the table, and you can't believe that this is the well-meaning, prim young man Karkat always talks about. He looks tired and sad and _pissed_ , and you're pretty sure you look the same.

Dad speaks up, then, bless his gentlemanly heart. "Boys, going at each other's throats won’t solve a thing, no matter how cathartic the experience might be. Calm down and act like mature adults for once—we are _not_ Neanderthals here." His voice is tense, too, though. You wish you didn't have to put him through so much stress. 

Neither of you sit down, though, so you take a deep breath and talk on your feet. "I have a theory, okay? A theory on how to fix it. But there's _poison_ going through his system, Kankri. That's bound to have some effects—and we've waited so long as it is. I don't even know if it'll work anymore."

"Then _why_ did you wait this long?" He glares, arms shaking.

"Because I could _kill_ him doing it! I don't have the right tools and it's really unsafe and—"

"He's _dying_ , John! You said it yourself! Any risk is worth it at this point, if there's even the slightest chance of making this better!"

A cough catches your attention, and all three of your heads snap over to see Nepeta sitting up from her nest on the floor, watching you with wide, yellow-tinted eyes. Once she sees that she has your attention, though, something in her gaze changes, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath. "You don't know if it'll work, right? Whatever this is? So try it on me, first. If I die, I die. That’s it. If I don't, though, you can save him, too."

There's a heavy pause in the room, but Kankri makes the decision before you can say anything else.

* * *

Your brilliant plan _is_ , in fact, good-ol'-fashioned colonial-era bleeding-out. Leeching, it's called. The practice is still used, you know, but only under very sterile, controlled conditions. It's dangerous—it's taken more lives than it's helped—but there _is_ some truth to it. The whole thing works by the same principle as sucking out snake venom, but on a larger scale. You're short a few pond suckers, though, so you'll have to make do with gravity and a few needles.

Nepeta is relatively calm about the whole thing, perky and chatting with your family (and herself) as you move around, sterilizing the tubed chord from one of the blood bags you pilfered from the hospital. As you learn more about her, you discover that she's actually pretty sweet and bubbly, despite how serious she's been up to this point. You suppose that's what happens when someone goes through a traumatizing experience, though—something, for instance, like siege from a horde of possessed humanoid monsters.

She tells you about her sister, and how she grew up on the road, travelling around the world with her as she recorded for her show. About Meulin's accident—a car crash, she says, caused by her sister's boyfriend and his driving-while-stoned tendencies—and the abrupt shift to a normal life they were forced into. About their yearly camping trips, like the one she had been heading to when she found Karkat, and her own boring life. She chats and chitters even after you've started pumping the black mess from her veins, only slowing down when she starts to feel a little dizzy from the blood loss. There's no end to the tar-like mess, though, so you pause, asking her if she wants to keep going. She says yeah, mumbling that maybe it would help if there was something to push out the "yucky stuff" and fill her up so she doesn't end up looking like a raisin.

You have no idea what she's talking about, and, when you check her pupils, see that they're almost entirely black, dilated like a cat's. Her coherency is slipping.

But something suddenly clicks, and you have an idea. The reason blood-letting failed so horribly in the old days was because it was a one-way process. Shit comes out, but nothing ever goes back in to replenish what's been lost. A transfusion, you think—a transfusion is what needs to happen.

After a bit of coaxing, though, you find out that she doesn't know her blood type, so you start rummaging for the bag she brought from her car, still parked a hundred and fifty miles away. There's a large possibility her ID might have the information you need, and—

_Holy fuck, what is that?_

The black-coated, curved blade clatters onto the wooden cabin floor when you drop it, having sliced your hand on the sharp edge. Immediately, you flick into panic mode, and start sucking on the wound, spitting your blood into the sink. After a few tense minutes you decide you're probably fine, and turn back around. "Why, exactly, do you have farming tools in your duffle?"

"'S Karkat's," Nepeta slurs, giggling tiredly. If the situation were different, you might think she was drunk. "He looked all fierce 'nd stuff ssslingin' it around, choppin' off hands."

You decide to leave it on the floor, and scoot it under the couch with your shoe.

As it turns out, your dad is a match for Nepeta's blood type, and he agrees to do what he can. The process is long and tedious, though, and you end up with not one but _two_ woozy patients by the end of it. But oh, _man_ , does it pay off.

Eventually, the black grossness pumping out of the girl's system starts lightening in color, right up until it’s completely red again. Only then do you stop, and Nepeta smiles at you before passing out.

You try to curb your excitement at the discovery, and Kankri agrees to do the same thing for his brother, without hesitation, even though you're a match for his blood type, as well. You set up a new feed and get to work. If anything, Karkat's blood is thicker than Nepeta's, though, and you're already wary enough with the fact that he's lost _so much_ from his shredded skin. He still hasn't woken up or made any sort of sound aside from a few sparse coughs, but his body is tense and you can see his fingers digging into the fabric of the blankets wrapped around him. Yet, much to your all-consuming relief, things go relatively smoothly for the first few minutes.

Before all hell breaks loose.

It starts with a coughing fit, not unlike any of the one he's suffered before, but when it _doesn't stop_ you start to get worried. Like always, you prop him up, but the jostling jerks are threatening to pull the needle out of his arm and you can't have that. Thinking quickly, you use one hand to press his shoulder back against the cushions and your other to wrap some sticky medical tape over the extraction site, hoping it will hold—when there's suddenly something growling low into your ear.

You glance up, and his eyes are open.

His teeth are bared.

He's _snarling_ at you.

And you realize then that you probably should have worked on him, first, because he's _so much_ _farther gone_ than Nepeta.

One of Karkat's hands reaches up faster than lightening, and, before you know how to react, he has you by the collarbone and is slamming you onto the couch next to him as he struggles against his blanket tangle. There's a moment then when his hold loosens, and you take the opportunity to spring into action, pinning him down, instead. You're easily twice his size, so holding him shouldn't be hard—but, for some reason, it _is_. You think back to the man in your garage and how he gripped you tighter than anyone you've ever met, and realize that things have suddenly gotten much, much worse.

Thankfully, though, even when he's on a tripped-out monster high, you're still much stronger than him, and you make a mental note to thank your dad for all the boxing and wrestling classes he signed you up for at Grandpa Harley's insistence. There's still a lot of thrashing going on below you, though, so you keep him straddled and secure as best you can.

Kankri is still sitting cross-legged on the floor, connected by the transfusion tube, but looking pale and scared and determined all the while. There's a glass of orange juice by his side that you know your dad must have brought over at some point, and, when you look around, you see that Jane has woken up and is clinging to your father tightly.

You _knew_ this was a possibility, but you're not giving up now. Not when you're _so close_.

It feels like years before Karkat starts to calm down, drained by the blood loss and exhaustion and the chaos raging in his body, and you, yourself, have lost feeling in your hands and legs by the time he finally passes out. By then, the blood bags have turned an awful, blackish-brown, and you know you’re making progress. The whole thing is taking longer than you would have liked, though, and you’re fully aware that Kankri is going to need a break soon—else you'll be faced with an entirely different problem than the matter at hand. You can't stop now, though, because there's no telling when Karkat will wake up again. Instead, you decide to do something incredibly stupid, risky, and most likely fatal.

You unhook Kankri, clean out another tube—you've got four, thank goodness, so you'll still have one left after this mess—and press a needle into your own arm. Kankri doesn't argue, even though he looks worried. You think he's probably too exhausted to. Instead, he weakly pats you on the back and welcomes you to the family, before waiting just long enough for you to patch up the puncture spot on his arm and flopping on the bed next to Nepeta. Your dad is out for the count, too, curled up in a chair with your little sister, so you take the opportunity to relish in the silence and redo the stitches your best friend split open in his outburst. Eventually, you’ll have to text your cousin and explain why you left her hanging what feels like a lifetime ago, but, by the time you’re finished and Karkat’s blood runs clear, you’re too exhausted to remember.

* * *

**[12/29/31]**

Karkat doesn't wake up for another three days, and, in that time, you manage to piece together a few things with your new, first-hand information on the virus—yes, the _virus_ , because that's what you decide it is. While the vaccine might have planted the seeds of this mess, whatever "stage two" is can be easily passed from one person to the next, with permanent after-effects. Nepeta's skin doesn't start to fade back—or show any signs of doing so—and her eyes stay yellow (which make the world too bright, she says). You decide that would explain Garage Man's aversion to the morning sunlight. Her nails, too, have hardened considerably—and, when, she freaks out one morning, convinced there's a stray cat outside the cabin, you realize there might be a few more internal changes, as well.

Because you find the cat _two miles_ away, mid-meal at the end of the path as it rips apart a screaming bunny.

All in all, though, the girl becomes a welcome addition to your strange little refugee group. You discover that she knows how to hunt a little too late to convince your grandparents that you can survive fine on your own, though, and spend an hour yelling over the phone with both your cousin and Grandpa about how they need to _stay put_. Once again, they don't listen, and the day after you return to the cabin with the wounded pair they set sail from Harley Island toward Florida.

Just as you're beginning to worry that Karkat might have slipped into a coma after his ordeal, though, your fears and prayers are answered. You're in the cabin alone a few days ever everything has settled down, your dad and Jane having gone out in search of firewood while Nepeta and Kankri set off earlier that morning, back toward her car to see if there's anything else they could salvage from her supplies. She had been heading toward a campsite, after all—there were bound to be more than a few useful things in her truck bed. There's no television or wi-fi in the little house, but you have your phone to access the outside world, which proves both frustrating and helpful at the same time. Annoying, of course, because the screen is so tiny—but the lack of pop-ups and ads is incredibly nice.

You're so wrapped up in reading an article on the recent collapse of the European Union, though, that you barely notice the muffled groan from the sofa where you're best friend is still stationed. He's been bathed and re-bandaged multiple times, so, more than anything, he looks like he's just sleeping. Which is nice, because you really don't want to think about what got him there.

You do, however, hear the slurred, gruff stream of curses that emerge after a while, and, in an instant, you're at his side, trying to gauge whether or not he's going to attack you again. There have been a few scary moments over the past few days, but nothing as serious as when you first brought him home. "Karkat...?"

"F- _u_ -ck," he moans—or, at least, you think he does. You can't really tell what he's trying to say, but at least he isn't trying to rip out your throat! Progress.

"Can you hear me?" There's a really long pause that makes you worried, so you busy yourself with closing all of the blinds and turning off the lights, just to give your body something to do. If Nepeta has trouble with bright things, Karkat will only be worse, and, if he actually _is_ coming to, you don't want to permanently blind him or something. When you return to his side, you see that he's slung an arm over his eyes, and you think you've made the right choice. "You there, Karkat?"

"Holy _shiiit,_ John," he draws out slowly. "I'm definitely dead."

"Wow, I really hope not," you reply with a high-pitched, crazy laugh of liberation (because _wow_ for a while there you never thought you'd hear him speak again). "That'd be a serious blow to my doctor-y pride if you were."

He snorts, and you notice that he doesn't cough afterwards. A good sign. "Oh, fuck—some dumbass college kid tried to fix me up. Now I _know_ I'm dead." You laugh again (because what else can you say?) and he flinches. "Lower your fucking noise level, John—and stop sucking all the oxygen and shit from the room. I can hear you processing carbon dioxide from here."

"Sorry," you whisper, and he visibly relaxes, sagging back into the blankets after a moment. There's another moment of silence and stillness, before you realize he's fallen back asleep.

You sit back down on the floor in a relieved daze, and see the article is still up on your phone, announcing the most recent body count in Europe. By the time you realize you've started crying, you aren't sure what the tears are for anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three, right on schedule at two weeks since chapter two was posted. Neat! Special thanks to [cactus](http://cactuswhisperer.tumblr.com/) for proofreading!
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> As usual, feel free to follow me on my personal blog {[egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/)}, or my new Homestuck fanfiction resource/help blog {[homestuckfanfictionhelp](http://homestuckfanfictionhelp.tumblr.com/)}, where I'll be posting prompts, character studies, writing playlists, advice, and more! 
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> Karkat's character song is _[Human](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbCeyb9okac)_ by Daughter. Enjoy!


	4. The Littlest Bit of Hope

**  
[1/7/32]**

The next week passes fairly quickly, as most of your time is split between taking care of Jane and keeping everyone else relatively happy. Your dad does well enough handling order within the cabin, but anywhere outside is fair territory for scuffles, shouting matches, and the occasional dramatic exit. It takes several days for Karkat to physically recover from his near encounter with death, and, in the meantime, you’re forced to watch as he attempts to adjust to the changes in his body. Some part of you wants to lie and say that he's doing fine, but you know you can't. In reality, he's well on his way to spiraling down into that realm of mental upset you're not qualified to handle at _all_ , and you don't think you will ever be able to truly express how grateful you are for Nepeta. Though Kankri tries hard to show his brother he still loves him, there's a new, physical rift between the two that they’ll never be able to ignore. The little cat-lover always seems to be right there to distract Karkat when his thoughts wander a little too much into forbidden territory.

You make a point to lock up the only mirror in the cabin, unscrewing it from the bathroom wall and bolting it instead onto the inside of the useless closet's door. No one complains—not even Jane. And, in that moment, you're suddenly struck by how much she has matured since you left home.

As the days go by, though, you hole yourself farther and farther up, until the little four-chair table is littered permanently with the contents of your file box—the one you'd dug out from underneath your bed at the last minute before leaving home. Over the past few months, everything you've accumulated on English Industries and its world-famous staff—both from the labs, themselves, and other somewhat-reliable sources—has found its way into various pockets and folders, tucked in and sealed tight.

When you'd started to collect things, it hadn't been for any other reason than to have an extra one-up on your classmates in pre- and medical school. After you returned home, the task took on a different tone, but it wasn't for any other reason than to put your own mind at ease. The whole thing had been a mostly-purposeless endeavor—a way to pass time—because you had been _completely sure_ that you and your family were safe from the things in those glass cages.

Now, though, you dive back into your research with a renewed fervor, scouring pages and pages of notes, lost in the haze of false optimism that you—by some miracle—can find something to help your friend. You're trapped in the middle of the Washington wilderness, technology-locked with no real equipment and an internet connection slower then molasses, but you press forward, hoping, hoping, hoping there's something. Anything. At the very least, knowledge is power—even if you have no way to actually use that knowledge just yet.

The New Year slides in much in the same way Christmas passed, somber and quiet with the addition of a few more people. There is no sparkled ball to watch on the TV, because the cities are in chaos and stupid traditions like that are the least of anyone's worries now. Your father and Jane pitch in to make some kind of sweet flatbread, because you don't have the ingredients to make a real cake, and palpable tension in the air hangs heavy like a ticking time-bomb, ready to explode.

And it does, just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, at the hands of some off-hand sentence Kankri says without thinking. Things escalate quickly after that, and, before you know it, Karkat is yelling, shouting at the top of his lungs _what's the point_ and _we don't have any life to go back to_ and _why are we even celebrating something like this_ before the wooden door slams and he's gone. Nepeta follows after a few minutes, and Kankri falls sleeps on the hole-filled screened porch hours later, still waiting for them to come home when the sun comes up.

In the face of it all, Jane becomes the mother-figure none of you ever had, reversing your roles. At eleven years old (going on thirty), she plays good cop to the bad cop your father eventually becomes, smoothing over the aftermaths of arguments between the Vantas brothers and offering a shoulder to cry on for whoever might need it. Nepeta confides in her as a friend, and she is the only one who bothers to set meals and coffee on top of your papers whenever you forget to take care of yourself, lost as you are in your work. Before long, Dad is too busy making sure the boys don't kill each other to watch out for you much anymore, and you know he shouldn't have to worry about you in the first place. He raised you well, after all.

Three days into the New Year, Nepeta decides to look for her sister. Meulin had supposedly set up camp farther north, where Nepeta had been headed when she found Karkat, but all attempts to contact her via cell phone go unanswered after the first day. Nepeta maintains a positive attitude, convinced that Meulin’s battery had simply died days ago, but you can't help the sinking feeling in your gut. Meulin is deaf, and, no matter what other skills her past career might’ve given her, that is a major handicap for _prey_ to have—which, you've decided, you all essentially are.

Nepeta takes Karkat with her when she goes, which surprises the rest of you, but you figure he would do nothing but mope around the campsite for the few days she planned for the trip, anyway, so no one makes a fuss. It occurs to you, then, just how much your relationship has shifted. Much like with his brother, the two of you don't quite see eye to eye on things these days. He was— _is_ —your best friend, but you can’t quite relate to him on the same level you used to. Already, he has started to drift away—and you've pushed him there, you realize, with how much time you've spent locked away, pouring over your research. That kind-of horrible epiphany lights a fire under you, though, and you throw yourself twice as hard into your work, scouring through news articles and medical forums and sketchy blog sites in search of anything you might’ve missed—anything that could possibly help him. Help Nepeta. Help you all.

The pair takes your dad with them, as well, so that they’ll have a "normal-looking representative" for Meulin, as Nepeta had put it, to assure her that they don’t mean any harm. The trip is slated to last a week at most—but when they return just the next morning, you don't have to ask what they find at Meulin's campsite.

You can guess by the look in Nepeta's eyes.

The following few days are spent in respectful silence, and even the Vantas brothers make an effort to keep their bickering to a minimum. Already, you all have begun to consider yourselves as something of a strange, mismatched family, but this death solidifies the feeling. Even if it's not quite medical truth, you became Karkat’s blood-brother the moment you stuck the needle in your arm, and Nepeta stepped in as a second sister in much the same way—the six of you will never again be anything less than a strange little clan of kindred spirits.

Now, as you sit on the screened in porch and watch the orange sunrise, you can't help but wonder if things will ever be different. The outside world is slowly falling apart while you and yours attempt to survive peacefully, blissfully in ignorance, tucked away from the chaos by trees and rocks and mountains and _space_. From what you've been able to read on your phone, you’re not the only ones to have been hit by the waves of Stage Two Infected suddenly crawling out of the cracks in the world—but you are, thus far, the only ones who actually bothered to _prepare_ for them. Not that you knew what you were preparing for at the time, of course.

Most of the formal news stations officially went offline four days ago, but that hasn't stopped wannabe journalists and investigative bloggers from posting uncut reports of what is going on in the world. From what you've been able to gather, by the time comatose vaccination victims had begun waking up, hospitals were already beyond filled past capacity, and all it took was one gray monster per building to wreak havoc on the nearly-thousand people inside each. Entire towns were wiped off the map overnight. The disease spread like wildfire, taking over whole populations like some kind of sick, reverse Pay It Forward. There's a good chance that most of your college friends are dead, and a quick Google search confirms what you already know—that everyone at the old Edgewood Community Hospital by your house is gone, too.

You flick off your phone, closing the same first-hand account of a diligent reporter succumbing to the side effects that you've managed to read thrice through in the past hour, and heave a long, heavy sigh. The sky is on fire, bursting with enough colors to fill a tinted rainbow, and, for a moment, think the forest might erupt alike some misplaced volcano. It worries you that the idea doesn't scare you as much as it once might have—you're too tired, now—too _exhausted_ and _sad_ and you just want everything to go back to the way it was all those _forevers_ ago. You've been here at the cabin with your family for fifteen days, now, but it already seems like an eternity has passed.

You can't remember the last time you properly smiled. Or laughed. Or pulled a prank or cracked a joke or—

A familiar _ping_ echoes through the early-morning stillness, and it takes you a moment to realize that the sound came from the phone in your hand. You don't have to guess who's trying to contact you, though—there are only a few people left around to do it. The global population is dwindling exponentially with each passing day.

JADE: hey john oh my gosh we are soooo close!!!! we should be up by north carolina in a few days which is really exciting!!!

JADE: i havent been back to the old house in forever!! i know we are not staying there long because we are coming to see you as soon as we land but i still think it will be really great even if it is just for a few hours!!!!

By now, you've come to begrudgingly accept the fact that your extended family is dead-set on risking their lives to come see your makeshift little group. After leaving your grandparents' island by boat on Christmas Day, the four of them have held a steady course toward domestic waters, heading first toward the Florida coasts and subsequently working upwards. There's an old waterfront home Grandpa Harley built when he was younger—the same place he took your grandmother for their honeymoon, so the story goes—in Croatan, North Carolina, though, where they plan to touch down. From then on, the journey your way will be one taken over land, and that’s the part you're most worried about.

Because they've been water-locked for the past few weeks, Jade and the rest have no idea what they'll be facing when they finally reach dry soil. You’ve kept on their case about reading the new reports, and you, yourself, have done your best to keep them updated on the world's happenings—but the devastation is something that has to be _seen_.

JADE: john are you ignoring me??? >:(

JADE: no wait oh my gosh it is really early in washington right now!! if you are reading this go back to sleep right away mister because you always seem so tired when i talk to you so you need all of the rest you can get okay?? so go sleep!!!!

JOHN: jaaade even if i had been asleep i would totally be awake by now, so you aren't allowed to scold me for being up.

JADE: john!!!

JOHN: jade!!!

JADE: joooohn!!!!!!

JOHN: jaaaade!!!!

JADE: okay i am going to be the mature one here and stop all this silliness!! also oh my gosh john you need to take better care of yourself

JOHN: i am definitely two years older than you so that definitely makes me more of an adult than you. also i take care of myself just fine thank you very much!

JADE: age has nothing to do with that!! it is just a stupid number that nobody important cares about.

JADE: and i have sources that have been telling me that you are a liar and you are NOT taking care of yourself!!!!! when i see you i am going to hit you john maybe that will get your brain to start working right again >:(((

JOHN: you've been talking to jane haven't you? ugh she is such a traitor! whatever she’s been telling you is probably really exaggerated so don't even bother okay?

You know your sister means well—you really do—and you aren't mad at her for confiding in your cousin. On the contrary, you're mad at yourself. _You're_ the older sibling. You're _her_ older brother, and you're supposed to be the one protecting her from the evils and dangers and sadnesses of the world. You're supposed to tuck her in and drive her to birthday parties and beat up bullies and threaten every boy she will ever bring home. She is eleven—too young to watch the world end, because there's so much life she has left to live. So much she has left to experience. So much that she'll _never_ get to experience—not anymore, at least.

You're not naive enough to think that things will get back to normal someday. Even if a miracle cure does suddenly surface, too many lives have already been lost. Countries have fallen. Social institutions have collapsed. It's only been a few weeks since you, Jane, and your Dad stood in the kitchen and watched that first breaking news report, but you already know that something like this can’t be easily reversed. How _stupid_ you and Karkat were to think that this—this _whole thing_ was something you could hide away from, holed up in a cabin for a few months. That it would be something you could wait out. This is bigger—so, so, _so_ much bigger than you could ever have imagined.

It's terrifying, because you suddenly feel like there's a weight on your back that you’re not ready to carry—not strong enough to lift.

JADE: so what if i have been talking to jane!! she is worried and that means that i have good reason to worry too!!

JADE: you need to snap out of whatever funk you have managed to bury yourself in and wake up!!! i know you are upset about your friends and what happened but you are only making things worse by moping around okay???

JADE: i know for a fact that you are not the only one having a hard time!!!!

A few moments pass as you just sort of sit and stare at your phone without actually typing anything in response—because what can you say? You know she's right—fuck, you _know_ she's right, and that somehow makes you feel even shittier. Your friendships are falling apart and your family is straining to stay together, and all you've been doing is sitting around, feeling sorry for yourself. You've been arrogant, thinking you could come up with some kind of solution in a matter of _days_ , even with all the new information circulating. People with years more experience and twice the amount of equipment are bound to be working on something— _anything_ —because there’s no way they _wouldn’t_ be. You have your own people to worry about, to focus on—someone else can deal with the rest of the world.

You send one last response to your cousin before re-locking your phone. You've missed the end of the sunrise, you realize, and the forest is ten times brighter than the last time you glanced up. Nepeta and Karkat, now both relatively averse to the daily brightness, will be heading to sleep in their light-proof blanket fort after the brief breakfast-for-you-dinner-for-them ritual you’ve established since they arrived. It's the only meal you all share together anymore, and you've skipped the last few in favor of catching society's few-remaining early-morning news reports.

Just before the cabin door creaks closed, you decide to leave your phone outside. An entire day spent without the tiny screen to distract your attention will do a world of good, you think. You’ll be able to focus on other things, for once.

That night, after an afternoon of stereotypically-sappy family bonding, you scroll through the newest headlines and decide you'll never go without it again.

* * *

**== > BE THE BORED JUNGLE GIRL**

Bored? You're not bored! You're _never_ bored, because your life is just _way_ too exciting to waste time on anything stupid like that!

Or, at least, it _normally_ is. Right now, though, your ETERNAL OPTIMISM is wearing more than just a little bit thin. You don't mind sailing—you really, really don't! But you're rarely trapped at sea for longer than twenty-four hours, forty-eight at most.

Now, it's been a day under TWO WEEKS, and you've long-since run out of things to do.

Your name is JADE HARLEY, and you are SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD. Sea-spray brushes your fingertips as you stretch out over the side of your Grandpa's thirty-six-foot Pearson, the _Blue Lady_ , reaching, reaching, _reaching_ toward the ocean. Your trip has been relatively smooth so far, but you'll soon be entering particularly-chilly East Coast waters and that luck is going to run out, you just know it. At least in terms of nice weather. You've lived all over the world— _all_ over the world—but you've always been partial to the warmer climates of tropical regions.

Washington is special, though. There's something about _that_ cold that just feels like home to you.

You like to think of your life as one big adventure, constantly on the move, meeting new people at every turn. The way you're living now? Yeah, no one on the planet would hesitate to slap an _Indiana Jones_ movie title over a scripted, condensed version of the stuff you've experienced. It's in your blood, Grandma tells you—a love of excitement and the resistance to being tied down. As your mother's mother, you don't doubt her—and, from what you _do_ remember of your parents, the statement rings true.

"Jade, darling! Dinner!" A voice hollers up from the boat’s cockpit, but you barely get the chance to turn around before— "My _goodness_ , child! You know you're not supposed to go hanging off that thing! Really, dear. You're going to fall overboard and freeze to death."

Between the sail sheets, you can see the white, frizzy mane of your grandmother's hair framing the same face you know you'll be wearing in forty years. The two of you are so much like cross-generational twins it's nearly hysterical, and even your grandfather has sworn that you look every bit the spitting image of Grandma in her youth. It's nice to know you'll be pretty when you grow up, you think, because your grandmother is wild and fierce and beautiful and _everything_ you've ever wanted to be.

You're halfway across the deck, though, when a decidedly-European whine sounds up from below, and you can't help but roll your eyes. " _Jade_! Jade, I'm _hungry_ and you're takin' so _long_ and Grandpa says we can't eat 'til you're down with us so would you _please_ hurry _up_!"

Grandma chuckles fondly, but you just scowl—because you're still _so bored_ , and a bored Jade is a very, very unhappy one. Bothering your silly little TEN YEAR OLD cousin JAKE ENGLISH will probably give you a good thirty seconds of entertainment, so you seize the opportunity and halve your pace, practically crawling over the winches and rope-anchors and vents. There are windows on the walkway, and you know he can see you when his pitiful keening starts up again.

Your moment of satisfaction is short-lived, though, because your grandma is still waiting and, quite frankly, you _are_ hungry—but it’s very much worth it.

* * *

Halfway through your second hot dog and just before a food fight erupts between you and Jake, your phone rings from the small room you and your cousin have share. That, in itself, is unusual—you don't keep in contact with many people over anything but the internet, because most of your friends—the people you've met on your travels—live spread out around the world. Anyone who _would_ be calling you is sitting nearby, and the only people _not_ around know that satellite reception is spotty-at-best when you're not on land.

Suddenly, you're worried.

Within moments, you've climbed under the table—it folds up, so when meal times come your family sets it out in the middle of the only open path below deck—and are scrambling to remember where you left it. By the time you manage to get the little thing into your hand, you're fairly sure it's on the last ring, so you don't even bother checking caller ID. Really, you don't have to.

"John?"

"Oh, Jade—Good. I thought you weren't going to pick up." It's your cousin, alright, but he sounds on edge. You haven't heard his voice in days, but you know him just as much as you know Jake—you're more than qualified to judge if something is wrong.

"You know you're not supposed to call, John—and we just talked this morning! You could have just texted me again, you know." Three heads are watching you through the doorway, still seated, and you see your grandpa raise his eyebrows. All you can do is shrug, though.

"Yeah, yeah—I know. But... _shit_ , Jade. I know you don't really have good internet reception where you are, and I di—" the signal cuts off, and you want to scream because John sounds _really, really upset_ and you're suddenly _really, really worried_. The last time he called you, his best friend had nearly bled out in his arms hours before. As a general rule, phone calls from four thousand miles away aren't good.

"John? Are you there? Can you hear me?"

"—ah, I'm here. Uh, what's the last part you got of that?"

You shake your head, even though you know he can't see you. "Doesn't matter—what's the reason we're talking? The point, I mean? If you get the important stuff out, we won't have to go crazy if I lose you."

There's a pause, and you're just about to glance at the screen to see if the call really _did_ drop when your cousin's quiet voice crackles back to life.

"It's Jake's dad, Jade—He's dead."

* * *

You're not really sure _what_ you feel, so when John starts going off on some long-winded explanation you just sort of hand the phone off to your grandpa and crawl back above deck. You need time to think, because the sensation of both wanting to punch something and throw a party all at the same time isn't exactly a comfortable one.

You settle for perching on the jib winch, right on the very tip of the bow, where you can let your bare feet dangle through the railing and watch an unbroken, endless expanse of ocean burn under the glare of the sun. It's your favorite spot—you could sit there for _hours_ and just _think_ , which is exactly what you need right now.

There are few people in the world you think you could ever really hate. It's a list you can, at the moment, count on one hand. And right at the top—though you'll never tell your youngest cousin—sits Jake's father: Lord Caliborn English. What he remembers about your Uncle English and what _you_ remember, though, are probably two entirely different storylines. Neither of you have seen him in years, and you absolutely prefer it that way.

Your grandmother has warned you more than once about what she calls the Harley Family Bad Juju—the repeating pattern of bad luck that’s been plaguing your family since you were just a tiny, tiny little baby. What began with the death of John's mother when Jane was born swept through every aspect of your lives, stealing both your parents in a plane crash you were lucky to survive and subsequently displacing you from any kind of real home at age seven. Jake's family was nice enough to take you in part-time for a while—you had been on your way to visit them when it happened, anyway—but, after two years spent shuffling between your Uncle Egbert's Washington home and the English family villa in Britain, you were finally carted off to a semi-permanent residence with the twin brother you never had—John.

During the months you were an aggravation in his household, though, your Uncle English got himself a pretty mistress and ran off to the United States, leaving your Aunt to care for one screaming toddler and a mountain of divorce paperwork. There wasn't any room for you in England anymore, and the abandonment sent your grandparents' last living child—Jake’s mom—into a downward spiral of alcohol and depression medication.

There isn't a doubt in your mind that Grandpa Harley and Grandma would take Jake off her hands, just like they did you from Uncle Egbert when caring for three children became too much for a single father (though you know he fought to keep you, which warms you up from tip to toe). But your Aunt English won't legally let her son go. The three of you have had to settle with whisking him away for your supervised trips and travels, keeping him happy when you can.

Your Uncle English—he _stole_ your cousin's life when he broke your aunt’s heart, and you can't forgive him for that. Not _one_ bit. You _hate_ him. Hate, hate, _hate_. He was a child trapped in a grown man's body with a temper too big to handle and a mind far too smart for how _immature_ he was. Everything he touched grew ugly and wilted away—and your grandparents hardly questioned John's insistence about that stupid vaccine, just because it was _his_ handiwork. He was god-awful and mean and you'd spend your life trapped on this stupid little boat just for the opportunity to punch him in the face.

So why do you feel so sad?

* * *

When you finally get the energy to wander back below deck, the sun has long-since set and your bare toes are beginning to turn blue. The boat is quiet and dark, and, as you head toward the stern, you see that the anchor has already been dropped for the night. In the cabin, though, there's a soft light, so you know that not everyone has turned in. Underneath the open hatch, your grandmother smiles sadly up at you from where she's sitting, wrapped up in blankets on a bench-turned-bed with your cousin in her arms as she runs her fingers through his unruly hair. He, at least, is asleep, but his eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. Your anger flares.

Your invincible Grandma suddenly looks tired, and you're smacked in the face by the fact that she's _getting older_. That thought alone is more frightening than every desert you've traveled, every storm you've weathered, every animal you've hunted.

Before you have the chance to get too lost in your thoughts, though, you hear Grandpa Harley clear his throat from where he’s standing just inside the bedroom door. He raises his eyebrows, and, just like that, your temper deflates. You're left feeling empty, completely burned out. It doesn't take long for you to regret ignoring John's explanation, because you realize, then, that you're completely out of the loop. Still.

You don't bother saying anything, though—instead, you shuffle toward him, right into his open arms. The table has been folded up and dinner packed away, though you doubt anyone actually bothered finishing the food after your escape.

As soon as your grandfather envelopes you in one of his monstrous, warm hugs, though, you sort of forget for a moment that you're supposed to be upset. He radiates strength and tranquility, and you just want to curl up in his lap and sleep forever. He's always been like that—the big grizzly-bear protector of your family. Gently, he scoots you into the room without letting go, and the door clicks closed behind you both. The silence that follows is heavy.

Eventually, your curiosity gets the better of you, and you can't help but mumble a quiet, "What did John say?" into the fabric of his shirt.

Grandpa Harley hums, thinking, and you can feel the deep sound reverberate through his chest, right into your bones. His accent, thick like Jake's but laced with the hundred inflections he's picked up from speaking so many different languages, rumbles in the quiet. "When people get scared, gem, they tend to lose sight of what they're doin'. They'll make bad decisions, and people will get hurt—when they're feelin' trapped, humans aren't much different from lions."

"I know, Grandpa."

He chuckles tiredly, and you feel him nod. "Yes, I suppose you do." There's a pause, then, and you have to nudge him with your forehead to get him to continue. "Your cousin said that no one has much of an idea ‘bout what really went on—just that there was some kind of explosion at the facilities Caliborn has been usin’ to run his research. The same place John spent this past summer."

Your head tilts up, and you squint at your grandfather's face above the rims of your glasses. The creases in his skin are noticeable for the first time in quite a while, and, like the bags under your grandmother's eyes, they worry you. "And nobody knows what caused it or anything?"

"People we're gettin' fed up with how little progress authorities were makin' on findin' a solution to what's happenin' in the world, so a group of them took matters into their own hands. No one's quite sure how they managed to make their way into the buildin’, itself, or what they were plannin’ to do—but they somehow set off an IED and leveled the whole place."

"I thought no one knew where Uncle English was? Like, people have been looking for him for weeks, right? Wouldn't someone have found him if he’d been in the one place _everyone_ looked?"

"The blast opened up some kind of underground installation—the body count from down there was twice the entire hired staff, and they're still findin' more under the chaos. Identifications have been made on some, though. Missin' persons and runaways, right up next to some of the greatest minds in science—that Scratch fellow and Caliborn, included, they’re sure. Well, they'd better damn-well _be_ sure, at least. There was somethin' goin' on down there that no one but a few people knew about."

Part of you is a morbidly curious, a little intrigued by the fact that something so sci-fi had actually happened. And on the other hand, you're angry—how had no one found it beforehand? Weren't policemen trained to sweep _thoroughly_ during a manhunt?

Before you have the chance to ask, though, your grandfather is continuing, telling you that most of the bodies found were already well-affected by the _thing_ that's been sweeping throughout the world, and almost everyone found was _already dead_ long before the blast went off. That, in addition to losing the two strongest leads to fixing what's going wrong—Scratch and your uncle—most of the records left were destroyed inside with the building. And that your cousin—your wonderful, blue-eyed cousin John— _already knew about everything there._

Later that night, you text him, and your conversation is more than a little strongly worded. You would rather call and yell at him, but service is still shitty so you have to settle for typing with caps-lock turned on. The exchange ends with accusations flying— _why didn't he tell you? Didn't he trust you? How could he have known something like that and_ not _said anything?—_ and you two don't speak again for several days.

* * *

**[1/9/32]**

On Friday, the _Blue Lady_ finally touches down in Croatan. The area is wooded, cut off from most everything else just like the day it was first settled, and you're fairly sure it had been a national park at some point years ago. There are only a few houses, all large and spread out from one another, and you can't decide whether the general population’s reluctance to live in the area is thanks to high real estate prices, strict building regulations, or the fact that the original Roanoke settlement had disappeared without a trace in the late sixteenth century. While Jake is a little apprehensive about the superstitions surrounding the whole place, you think it’s all hysterical. As if anything could get the drop on _your_ family! Hah!

All in all, though, you're practically jumping up and down, _so freaking happy_ to be back on land after over two weeks at sea. Even when you nearly throw up on the dock because you've gotten a bit _too_ used to your sea legs, you willingly do so with a smile, patting Jake's back like the good not-big-sister you are as he empties his stomach into the bay. This is the worst part about landing, and it'll be at least a few hours before you get back your stationary bearings. Ugh.

The two of you end up sitting on the docks for most of the evening as your grandparents unpack, watching for fish you know you won't see and talking about dumb things. He's nervous about the trip up to Washington, you know—in a fit of frustration after your argument with John, you had shouted at him everything that could possibly go wrong along the way. It wasn't exactly your finest moment, and you'd both ended up on the floor in tears, clinging to each other as he yelled about not wanting to die. You've tried your best to keep him close and happy since then, because, now that you're on land, things are about to get _really_ complicated _really_ fast.

Even though you've taught him how to fire a gun and fight with his fists, he's only ten, and you don't know what you'd do without him. For all the quarreling and teasing and poking and prodding you do, you love Jake, and you don't want to lose any more family. Ever.

Eventually, you both start splashing each other with the water below your feet, but holy _shit_ it's _January_ and you're _really, really freaking cold_ after just a few minutes. Jake starts shivering halfway up the path to your house, so you end up carrying his frozen butt the rest of the way. Even though he's ten years old and perfectly capable of walking, himself, you don't really mind. He clings to you, you cling to him, and you just sort of stay wrapped up in each other for the rest of the evening—even as you help him out of his wet clothes, smother him in a warm, fuzzy blanket, and set him in front of the fireplace one of your grandparents must have lit while you were outside. It's late, now. You didn't stay out long enough to see the sunset, but the clouded sky is plenty visible through the big floor-to-ceiling windows you've always especially loved about this house.

"Hey, Jade?" His voice is a little muffled, because he's pulled the blanket completely over his head for some reason. He's just a lump of wool, pressed right up against your side. At least his shivering has stopped.

"Yeah?"

Jake doesn't say anything after that, though, and you start to get a little worried. Pulling at the corners of his soft little shell, you peek in, just to make sure he hasn't accidently suffocated or something—and immediately pull him into your lap. He doesn't really fit, but you curl around him anyway, squeezing him tight. Black hair messy, glasses askew, he looks wide-eyed and adorable and _sad_ , and you wonder what you did in a past life to deserve this—what was so bad that everyone around you has to suffer _so much_. "Don't worry, okay?" You say, giggling. It sounds empty to you, but he relaxes anyway. "Things are going to be _fine_. The world's a just kind of a little messed up right now, but we were born sturdy, you know? So stop worrying!"

He nods, still too stiff for your liking, and you shake him a bit, hoping he'll grace you with a grin. His smiles are all teeth and squinty-eyes and beaming, and you love them—even though you'll never tell him. "Golly, I hope Jane's alright. And John, too."

"They're tough as bullets, too, so I know they’re fine. Jane's got John looking after her, and he won't let anything bad happen. They've got Uncle Egbert with them, too, and some of John's friends." Suddenly, you feel a little guilty for cutting off your cousin. He's tried to text you, but you haven't responded—he knows you're all fine, though, because Jane and Jake have been chatting back and forth for most of the journey. Your drama didn't affect them much, thank goodness.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right. 'M frettin' too much."

"Of course I'm right, dumb-butt. I'm always right."

"That's hogswallop, and you know it."

"Hogswallop? There's no way that's a real word."

"It is _too_. Grandpa Harley says it."

"So you're going to start saying it now, just because he does?"

"I think it's just _dandy_ , Jade! It's a dandy word."

Rather than grace him with a response, you just sort of shove him and roll your eyes. Later, when your Grandma comes to find you both for dinner, she walks in on one of the most epic pillow fights ever to grace the battlefields of North America. Because Harley-English bedding battles are _legendary_ , and, just for a while, you manage to forget about everything.

* * *

**[1/12/31]**

You spend one night in a real bed, before you have to pack up and head out again the next morning. The car is filled with clothes and food and camping supplies and guns and _lots_ of ammunition, and the next three days are a blur of highway scenery passing by your window at ninety miles an hour. By John’s advice—after just a few hours on the road, you get so bored that you decide to call a temporary truce and start talking to him again—your grandparents take care to keep your miniature tank of a truck away from populated areas, but what you _do_ see when during bathroom breaks and gas stops is frightening.

It occurs to you you rather early on that you may have been subconsciously doubtful of everything that had happened— _was_ _happening_.

Yes, you'd been in the airport when flights had shut down. You'd witnessed the chaos, the noise, the confusion. You'd been in the middle of it all—but that was _weeks_ ago, before the worst parts of the madness had swept through and torn everything up. _Everything_.

Now, though, the world is silent.

It's been three days since you landed, three weeks since you left the mainland, just off the coast of your own island—and you haven't seen any living soul apart from your family. Pullovers are littered with broken glass, 7-Elevens lined with empty shelves, and blood on the door of a Wal-Mart in Colorado. Still, though, you don't come across anyone—normal or otherwise. It's both worrying and aggravating, but, despite the fact that you're pretty sure most of the danger has passed, you don't complain when your Grandpa shuffles everyone through each stop as quickly as possible. All of creation is quiet and boring and empty and oddly peaceful.

Until, that is, you're halfway through Washington, just a few hours from your final destination. That’s when things start to go really, really wrong.

I-2 is, perhaps, the dreariest of all cross-country roadways—especially in January. Lined the _entire_ way on either side with nothing but rocks and trees, it stretches throughout the whole of Washington, branching off into little highways every now and then without actually ever coming to an end. There are almost no Exits. None. Because, with the exception of one city right on the Washington-Montana border, it cuts through more national parks than you can count on both hands. Huzzah.

In your dead-set pace straight for the Egberts' cabin, though, you forget to take this particular piece of information into account—right alongside the fact that, oh gosh, _cars need gas_. You're the one behind the wheel when you realize the mistake, your grandparents both napping fitfully in the back, worn out from days of driving. Jake is in the passenger seat next to you, legs propped up on the dashboard as he doodles in the grid-paper notebook you’ve never seen him go anywhere without. He's not an artist by any means, but, then again, his drawings are more technical than aesthetic. Rockets and silly inventions and algebra puzzles; it's impressive for a ten-year-old, but, considering who his father is—was—you realize that your cousin's suppressed genius should never have come as a surprise to you. Even though you're not sure the talent matters much anymore, some part of you is still convinced that he'll grow up to change the world—but only, of course, if he learns to focus and actually finish one of his projects.

Now, you toss Jake your phone without taking your eyes off the road. He starts to whine, but y a quick, "Check the GPS—see where the next gas station is," cuts him off. Your tone sounds tired, even to you, so you glance over and smile, tacking on a quick _please-and-thank-you_ for good measure.

"Ninety-one miles," he says. "It's sayin' we're just under two hours away. That's, uh, a bit far, yeah?"

You shake your head, though—it's not _too_ bad, just not ideal. You've still got enough fuel left to get you that far at most, but, what with the rate you're going, you'll run out as soon as you get to the campsite—essentially demoting your car to a useless metal box for the time being. "Where is it, though?" If you go the extra distance, you might be able to—

"...Seattle?"

Oh. Well.

Silence passes for few moments as you mull over your options, even going so far as to consider waking your grandparents for a quick family meeting. As of yet, though, you haven't seen anything even remotely dangerous—but it's been quite some time since you ventured into a city so populated, and, from what John and Jane have been relaying to you over the past few weeks, you have plenty of reason to be on guard. Perhaps if you aim for the outskirts...? Sure, it'll tack a few extra hours onto to the trip—Seattle is the same distance westward as the campground is north, so you'll have to drive past where you’re headed—but, in the end, you'll have a full tank of gas and possibly a few more supplies to show for your trouble. And, already, you're making great time. By driving almost twice the legal speed limit the entire way, you've been able to chop a solid chunk of time off the whole journey. If you head toward the city and loop back later, you'll arrive just before you would have had you moved at a more reasonable pace.

You make the executive decision to keep driving, bypassing the exit that would have taken you to the cabin, and head straight for the city.

For the rest of your life, you will regret it.

* * *

By the time the Seattle skyline breaks into view over the trees, your grandparents have awoken. At first, Grandpa Harley was a bit annoyed with you for changing course without asking, but Grandma defends your reasoning—and _no one_ has ever won an argument against her, especially family.

A plan is formulated, and you all decide to make the most of your time in semi-civilization—because you're not sure when you'll get the chance again in the near future. Gasoline is your first priority, of course, but grocery stores and corner market are a close second. From what you've been able to gather from the Egberts, no one has made any attempt to go searching for restock supplies, and you all know that they've been trapped in the cabin since the day you set out from Harley Island. They’re bound to be running low on more than a few essentials by now. You resolve to split into two groups, head in opposite directions, and reconvene after a quick scout of the area. From there, you'll take the car to whatever you find and load up.

Just like every other place you've come across over the past few days, Seattle is a desert-town. You find it hard to believe that the area is one of the country’s busiest cities, but you suppose death and evacuation really can chop a significant portion off the population. There are no car horns, no yelling pedestrians, no ringing cell phones. No movement. Nothing. The streets are just cold and barren and eerie. You don't like it, because it's just _too goddamn quiet_. The whole thing is more than a little unsettling.

The first gas station you come across has no power, so you're forced to drive farther in, hoping that’s not the case for every place you come across. Your best bet ends up being one of those combination pump and mechanic joints, so Grandpa Harley tasks you and Jake with the important job of finding a few empty gas cans. It doesn't take as long as it should to break into the garage, because most of the locks have already been broken—but your worry is soon forgotten as you root around the overturned tool dressers and work tables. Meanwhile, your grandparents begin unloading the necessary essentials for a scouting operation on foot: your guns.

You can never be too careful, after all.

Three bright red gas cans are found, and Grandma volunteers to stay behind, filling everything up while the rest of you fan out. Jake ends up with you, because your grandfather will be able to make more progress on his own without having to worry about the youngest of your bunch—and the two of you head south after a quick hug goodbye, three firearms and enough bullets to take out a small army all at your disposal.

As you both walk, your footsteps echo on the cold concrete, but the sound is muffled through ear-flapped hats that don’t do much to guard against the winter. The scenery, itself, doesn’t have anything particularly exciting to offer—it’s just block after block of abandoned restaurants and townhouses, only some of which are smashed open. Eventually, you and Jake get bored enough to start skip-racing, silently challenging one another as you try to jump over every crack in the sidewalk without missing a step. You stop, though, when his phone buzzes. After that, it becomes your job to make sure he doesn't run into anything while he tries to multi-task, texting and walking at the same time. By process of elimination, you figure he's talking to Jane, but you steal his phone anyway in an effort to break the endless monotony of your mission. So far, you haven't found what you're looking for, so you might as well have some fun while you're out. You'll have to turn back soon, anyway.

"Dag nab it, Jade! Give it here!" Jake yelps, flailing a bit as he turns around to face you.

You're too quick, though—not to mention a good foot-and-a-half taller than your little not-brother. "Nope!" You laugh, dancing away from his grip as the rifle strap slung around over your shoulder rubs right up against your neck. "I don't feel like it."

" _Jade!_ "

Soon, you’re chasing each other through the streets, running and laughing and yelling a bit more than you ought to be. But the silence is so thick—so heavy—you just can't help but want to bust it open. Along the way, you manage to catch glances at the screen of Jake's phone, but you don't ever take the time to actually read through his conversation.

"All that sitting in the car made you _slow_ , Jake!"

"You've just got longer legs than me! You're not bein' fair, you dirty cheater!"

"Cheating implies effort, dummy, and I'm pretty much just _jogging_ at this point!"

"Get back here 'nd fight me like a proper gent!"

"I'm a _girl_ , Jake!"

"Well, you could've fooled me!"

" _Anyone_ could fool you!"

"Oh, for frigs flipping sake!"

"What does that even _mea—_ " You stumble, retort dying mid-word as a new sound shatters through the still air. It's a ways off, back the direction you came, but you can hear it loud and clear all the same. For a moment, you're not sure what's happening, or what it is—it's been a while since you heard anything like it. But, once it _does_ click, you take off sprinting toward the gas station, Jake in tow.

Because car horns shouldn’t be going off if there’s no traffic for miles.

* * *

You're still three or four blocks away when you hear the first gunshot, and, the moment you do, you will your legs to pump faster. Jake is at your side—you've got him by the wrist, tugging him along as you run, and you can hear him asking _what wrong_ , _what's happening?_ You don't have an answer, though, because you haven’t got a clue, either.

As you get closer, shouts come into focus, along with some other sounds you still can't quite make out. If you didn't know better, you might think there were wild animals brawling it out back where you left Grandma, but you're in the middle of a freaking _city_ so that can't possibly be righ—

When you round the last corner, you freeze, yanking Jake back as fast as you can, and it takes all of your strength to keep him from falling as the momentum of your sprint keeps him moving forward.

Over the past few weeks, you and John have had countless conversations about what he and his friend are calling Stage Two Infected. He's told you about them—about their appearance and what he can tell of their abilities from the information he's been able to gather—and he's even sent you a picture of the two affected people now living with him. Karkat and Nepeta, you think their names are. You had been shocked at first, of course, but Nepeta had been laughing in the photo, hanging off the grumpy-looking teenager and looking every bit like a normal girl—with a few physical changes, of course. After that, it hadn't seemed like much of a big deal, because they'd both looked so _human_ that their grey skin and yellow eyes and mismatched teeth could have been passed off as bad lighting, nothing more.

But these people— _these things_ —look nothing like the two friends in that picture.

Fingers arched, they're lunging like cats with claws bared, snarling and spitting and hissing and growling. Grey lips, dark with what you hope is a natural tint and not something _else_ , curl up over fangs of varying length, all beneath pupils so dilated you can see them from where you're standing. You don't have time to count how many there are, because they're all moving so fast, scaling the metal pumps like they're _nothing_ and crouching on the hood of your car and just sort of running around and—

There's another gunshot, and you see one go flying backwards. It hits a closed garage door, but doesn't stay down long—and only then do you see your Grandma. She had been taking cover behind one of the pumps, you see, and you feel your chest swell with pride at what a picture she makes, white hair just as wild as yours, blowing in the wind as she cocks the barrel of her rifle and fires again, this time at a different monster.

The moment of triumph is short-lived, though, because everything suddenly starts moving at the speed of lightening and there are _so many_ and she's just one woman and " _Grandma, look out!_ " but it's too late and—

_BLAM!_

Blood and brains explode just behind your grandmother's head as the third creature takes a shotgun blast to the skull, seconds before it hits. In the distance, you can see Grandpa Harley running at full speed toward the chaos, and you breathe a sigh of relief. The grey things don't even pause at the loss of their comrade, though—they just keep lunging, lunging, lunging for your grandmother, barely giving her time to aim or reload or _anything_. And the shout—though you're not sure whether it came from you or Jake—manages to draw the attention of some toward the two of you, too.

A few of them break off from the pack, and you don't have time to really listen to your grandparents' combined warning yells before you're cocking your own rifle, firing three near-consecutive shots. You only manage to land one hit, though, because _god damn it_ they're fast—and it doesn't even slow the thing down. Out of the corner of your eye, you see something glint, and four more bullet cracks let you know that Jake has drawn the twin pistols you gave him for his birthday last year. They're big and awkward in the hands of a ten year old, and he isn't the best at handling them quite yet—but he manages to put at least one round in the lower leg of an approaching humanoid beast. You reload as it stumbles, and then aim for the same spot.

Soon, it's falling to the ground, unable to run properly with only one foot.

You take the opportunity of its momentary falter (because you've got the feeling it won't stay down long) to grab Jake's hand and _sprint_ , powering toward the car where your Grandpa and Grandma are fighting tooth and nail like the heroes from your bedtime stories. If there's one thing you've learned over years of watching predators and prey of every species fight to the death in real time, it's that there’s power in numbers—and that concentrated groups generally win. There doesn't seem to be much organization within the hoard of grey things, so you bet on the fact that they're all acting independently, instinctually, without any real hierarchy—if so, your family has a chance, despite the horrible disadvantage of only having a few players on your team.

Within seconds, you're pressed up with your grandparents, back against the car as the four of you fire round after round after round after round—reload—and fire again.

" _Shit!_ " Suddenly, there's a clatter at your side, and you whip around just in time to see one of Jake's pistols hit the asphalt. He's still got his second gripped tight, but the clip he has a white-knuckled hold around tells you he had been trying to restock his bullets just before—

You don't think, just raise the barrel of your rifle and _wham!,_ shove its muzzle right between the eyes of a creature, pulling the trigger just as it gets too close.

"Jake, are you alright?" You hear Grandpa call, but you're too busy providing cover fire for your cousin as he fumbles for his fallen weapon to actually turn and look.

What happens next passes in a blur of red and sound and pain.

From behind you—from the _roof of your_ _fucking car—_ you hear an unfamiliar voice snarl something along the lines of, " _Holy fuck!_ " And you whip around, poised to shoot because there's _another grey thing up there_ and _how did he get around there without you seeing_ and—

" _Jade!_ "

Jake's scream is so terrified that you can't do anything but jerk back, right in time to see another monster hurtle at you from the direction you'd been facing just moments before. He hasn’t moved from his crouch on the ground, and your body is still tilted upward, faced toward at the _talking_ one. You don't have enough time to turn and plant your feet and aim and shoot and reload and repeat and—y _ou just don't have enough time_.

So you do the only thing you can and _lunge_ , letting your weapon go and wrapping yourself around Jake's little body just as the other thing leaps up, too.

You hear a chorus of yelling, clench your eyes shut, and hold on tight as it slams into your back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness. For some reason, I had so much trouble with this chapter--and I'm still very, very unhappy with it. Thankfully, though, next chapter will be easier! And I have some exciting news: Part I is almost finished! This is the second to last chapter of it, so the chapter after next will begin Part II. We're so, so, so close to the introduction of the characters I know we've all been waiting for... The Stiders! Very exciting. 
> 
> Anyway, as usual, you can get in touch with me either on my personal blog { [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/) } or my Homestuck fanfiction help and resource blog { [homestuckfanfictionhelp](http://homestuckfanfictionhelp.tumblr.com/) }. Feel free to drop by and say hello!! 
> 
> Theme song for this chapter is _[We Don't Eat](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR3HRMO7nZg)_ by James Vincent McMorrow.
> 
> Happy reading!


	5. Underneath This Skin

**[1/12/32]**

**== > REWIND SIX HOURS**

**== > BE THE PISSED-OFF FREAK OF NATURE**

The forest itself is quiet. It's the dead of winter, twelve days after that raging catastrophe your (new, expanded) family has the nerve to call a "happy" New Year, and any animal worth its weight in salt has found a warmer place to sleep. Maybe you should, too, you think—but, then again, you’re not an animal. Or are you? You’re not sure anymore.

In less than an hour, the sun will peek its stupid, ugly mug over the horizon, and you don't want to be around when that happens. Over the past few weeks, nighttime has become your friend and the daylight your enemy. Or, rather, an annoyance you've made into an enemy.

Your name is still KARKAT VANTAS, but part of you is certain that's the only thing about you that _hasn't_ changed. And it's the one thing you will never, ever let go. You think you can hear Shakespeare on the breeze— _what's in a name? That we call a rose by any other name might still smell as sweet_ —but you wave it away and shut it up as harshly as you can. Because you're not a rose. There's nothing sweet about you. There never was, really, but now even less so.

Absently, you run your tongue over the mismatched teeth lining your gums, listening hard to the forest's silence in hopes you'll hear Nepeta approach soon. She hunts at night, determined to feed the lot of you a hearty protein diet, because you ate the last of the lunch meat ages ago. There isn’t much to find, unfortunately.

One of your top molars wiggles at the touch, and you can't help but sigh. Great. Another one. It'll be gone in a few days, just like half of its neighbors, and you know—eventually—the rest will follow suit. They’ve got to make room for the razor replacements you've already started to grow in, after all. Last fall, you'd spent hours on the phone with John, tossing out speculations about the laboratory Infected and their wolf-toothed smiles, but now you don't have to wonder anymore.

You must make quite a sight, you think—half of your chompers sharp like crocodile’s where they’ve pushed in again, the other few still… normal. Jane keeps saying you look like a really stupid shark, but you wouldn’t know. All of the dental re-working started happening after they'd taken down the mirror, and you haven't made much of an effort to go seek it out to look. You know you won't like what you'll see— it'll just make you hate yourself more. And, though you're not really sure that's possible, you don't want to take the chance.

In the darkness, you can't tell the color of the skin pulled tight across your bones. You can pretend, for a moment, that it's still the deep tan of your Mexican lineage—that it's still the same color as your brother's. Seeing him hurts, now, sometimes—like a knife to the chest, because he’s too similar to the reflection you’ll never make again. He still _looks_ like Kankri, sure—taller, with broader shoulders and messier hair—but he also looks like everything you were. Human.

Even your skinny physique, once the most obvious evidence of your nonexistent athletic prowess, is deceptive now. You've got muscles you shouldn't, hidden underneath skin that isn't yours.

You hate it.

Half a lifetime of pointless contemplation later, you hear Nepeta crashing through the trees and underbrush, making her way back toward you. She only does that when she's frustrated—when she’s lost a kill—so you know today's meals won't be much more than a few cans of preserved vegetables and whatever Mr. Egbert can whip up split between the six of you. At night, the two of you go out, and during the day, Jane and her father cook what you find, leaving portions aside for you and Nepeta to eat after they've gone to bed. Or, at least, Nepeta hunts. You don't know how, and, quite frankly you're not too keen on learning. It reminds you just how inhuman you are. The ultimate predator, built to fight things you hope you'll never have the pleasure of meeting.

When she stomps into the clearing you've been holed up in for the past few hours, you can see her well enough in the darkness. Better than you would have before, at least. Once she called your newfound pseudo-night vision a tactical advantage, but you disagree; you think it's weird.

At times like these, though, you find you don't really mind it. When you're alone with her in the quiet of nature, you like to be able to see her in the element she grew up loving. She looks so happy, so content, so _excited to be alive_ when she runs through the trees or lies in the grass or just sort of sits and stares up at the stars. You can pretend in the darkness that neither of you are freaks. She doesn't seem to mind being an anomaly though, and that’s a curious thing. You wonder what you missed during the three days you were out cold at the very beginning of your friendship, because no one should be so at ease with such a drastic change.

Your brain registers then that you're on the receiving end of a particularly nasty glare. As expected from her grand, noisy, unhappy entrance, Nepeta's hands are empty and she's blood-free.

"No luck?" You ask, and you can see her eyes roll even in the darkness. Green, with yellow at the edges—but still so bright.

She shakes her head and huffs, cheeks puffing out in a pout that makes her look twelve, not seventeen. "It got a _way_!" Wow, whining. Very mature.

You snort back a laugh, because the situation suddenly seems really, really absurd.

"Yeah, well, maybe you'll get to rip some stupid animal's throat out tomorrow night," you say, standing up to meet her as she approaches. She nudges your side and loops an arm through yours, face suddenly beaming again as she thinks up a new attack plan for the next round of this painful routine. Right then and there, you decide you never want to get on her bad side—you'd hate to see what she looks like when she's angry, what with how filled with glee she is by the natural power-play for survival of predators and prey. You wonder how many times she and her sister did this—camped out in the Amazon or spent weeks on the African savannahs. Your life suddenly seems very boring in comparison.

Nepeta hums, grinning as she begins to pull you along, back toward the Egbert’s cabin. "Maybe, maybe not. I hope so, though!"

"You're fucking terrifying, you know that?"

"And you're so _grumpy_! You should come with me sometime. I bet you get so _bored_ when you sit there all by yourself for _hours_."

It's not dull, you think. But you do end up having just a little too much time alone with your thoughts. Rather than answer though, you shake your head, and before long Nepeta is chattering away. She goes about whatever animal she had been chasing and how it had slipped through her cunning claws (you curl your hands into fists at that, and feel your too-thick nails dig into your palms—claws indeed) for the rest of your walk.

It doesn't take long to reach the campground, and as you approach you both quiet. The others—the _humans_ , your brain supplies—should still be asleep, curled up like you wish you were. It wouldn't be fair to wake them, because they take such great care in staying quiet while you and Nepeta rest during the day. The moment you break through the trees, though, you're greeted by a sight you don't expect. Seated on the small, screened in porch is John, barely lit by the graying sky and the LCD light of his cell phone screen. He hasn't been up this early in a while—not since the day you caught word of the EI Labs explosion. Something settles in your gut, and you suddenly get the feeling that you should be worried.

He doesn't hear you approach until you're right up next to the screened in door, but you're not sure whether it’s because of his horrible hearing—his _normal_ hearing—or the fact that you're suddenly inclined to stalk him silently like some kind of humanoid cat. But the moment he does pick up on your presence, his head whips around, eyes wide for just the faction of a second with... surprise? Fear? You tell yourself _no_ , not that, and bite down an angry comment.

"Karkat?"

"No, it's the fucking plumber." You see him visibly relax, and decide that he'd just been afraid of the dark and what else might be lurking in it—not you, specifically. Or, at least, that's what you tell yourself.

He giggles, but it's breathy and strained and forced and tired. You don't like it. "Oh? Well, good—because we've been having some trouble with the pipes."

You sigh. "Why are you out here, John?" Nepeta swats at your arm for being so abrupt, but, as you watch, your best friend—is he still your best friend?—sags a little, dropping back down into the chair he'd been sitting in before hearing your arrival. He's done a lot of that lately, you realize. Sagging and sighing and just sort of generally being sad. You're pretty sure you're responsible for most of it, even though he's never said so, but you can't bring yourself to tell him to get over whatever it is that’s pulling him down. You're too busy blaming yourself over what happened—over what you became—to actually address the problem. And perhaps you _do_ blame him a little bit for it, too. He shouldn't have tried so hard to save you if this— _this_ —is what you would eventually become. Not that he could have known, though. Not that he could hav—

"Jane's been tossing and turning for the past few hours, coughing in her sleep. I'm pretty sure she's got a fever, too." He drags his fingers over his face and through his hair, looking every bit the two-parts-older-brother-one-part-concerned-parent he is. "Dad's up with her, now, but—God—I don't know what we're going to do if she gets much worse."

Next to you, Nepeta whines worriedly. "But she seemed fine when we saw her earlier!"

"I know—but Jane's more stubborn than all of us combined. She won't admit there's a problem until she's, like, lost a limb or something."

You nod, already moving ahead in the thought process. "Yeah—if one of us gets sick, we're all fucked, right? I mean, we've been living smashed together since we got here, and that's probably not going to change anytime soon."

Again, he sighs, and you feel Nepeta shift beside you, suddenly realizing how bad this has the potential to be. It's not just about Jane—it's about everyone. "So fix her!" she chirps, but it's a little forceful, even for her. "You're supposed to be a doctor, right? So make her better!"

"But I'm _not_ a doctor!" He bites back, frustrated, almost too loud. There's a pause as he grinds both palms into his eyes, across his temples, and you wonder if _he's_ feeling alright. Stubborn bullshit might be a running genetic trait in his family, after all. "And... even if I was, I couldn't just _fix_ her. We're down to less than a week's worth of food, but even that hardly has the kind of vitamins and stuff she'll need if things start getting worse. And I don't even think we have enough water to last that long!"

You blink, because the fact that you're running out of food is news to you—and suddenly you're _pissed_. At John for keeping something _that big and important_ from you, and at yourself for not realizing it sooner. "Oh, shit—what? Why didn’t you _tell me_?” You turn to Nepeta, “Did _you_ know?" And she shakes her head. Her hands snake around your forearm again, and she grips you tight. She's upset, too. "What the _hell_ , John? We're just as much a part of this group as you!"

"I know, but—"

"Do you not trust us? Is that it?"

"No, it's not—"

"Just because we're fucking _monsters_ now—that doesn't mean we don't have just as much a right to know what's going on!"

"God damn it, Karkat, this has _nothing to do with that_!"

"Bullshit!"

It takes your brain a moment to register the fact that Nepeta is not longer holding your arm, but, by the time it does, you're already busy trying to catch yourself as she shoves you to the ground. Everything goes still for a moment—even John is frozen where he's back up and standing—as you blink up at her. Fists clenched, feet spread, she stands above you looking more like some kind of enraged Amazon goddess than the five-foot ball of grins and giggles you've come to befriend in the weeks since she picked you up off the street. Since she saved your life.

"Is that what you think of me?" Her voice is small and quiet and hurt and _pissed_ , and it dawns on you, then, that every thought you've ever had about yourself could just as easily be applied to her, too. Except it never did. You never meant it that way.

"That's not wha—"

"You just said it! You just said _we_ , Karkat! That _we're_ monsters now!" Fuck. Fuck, you did. But no, no you weren’t thinking. You were just angry and sad and frustrated and hurt. But you didn't mean it. Not about her. "Well, _I'm not_ , okay? I might look kind of scary but I'm _not_ a monster—and even if I were, I wouldn't be a _bad_ monster."

"I—"

" _No—no! Just shut up!_ " You do, and you feel your loose teeth rattle when as your jaw clicks closed with a little too much force. "You're so mopey and depressed and mad all the time and I'm _so freaking sick of it_! I didn't know you before this whole thing happened, but that doesn't matter to me because the important thing is that I know you _now_! And I know the way you are _now_ —how you look and how you act—so _the rest of everything else doesn't matter_ , okay? You can cut your hair and paint your nails and go to a tanning booth and change everything about yourself, but you'll still have the same voice and the same sense of humor and you'll still be the same height and the same shoe size! I know you're a good person and I know _I'm_ a good person, so I don't think the way we look now should matter so much to you because _the whole world and_ _everything is going to shit and we just have to learn to deal with i—_ "

Suddenly, the cabin door swings open and a little head of black hair rushes out, blurring around the three of you before you even get the chance to blink. A second later, you see Jane pause just off the walkway, bend over in the grass, and retch. Her father follows, sprinting out of the cabin after her, and John's at her side in an instant.

The spell—or curse—is broken, shattered by the sounds of an eleven year old girl puking up her guts, but, when you glance back up at Nepeta, her expression hasn't really changed. It's deflated, yeah—most of the anger is gone. But now, she just looks so _disappointed_. It occurs to you then that you might have just lost something very precious. Without a word, she turns, disappearing back into the woods the both of you emerged from a hundred years before.

You’re frozen, and Kankri's groggy voice from the screened in porch says something you don’t quite catch. You just sort of turn to stare at him, and end up getting blinded by the red of his sweater against the goddamn phoenix-lit sunrise you had hoped to avoid.

* * *

It becomes clear rather quickly that the day is going to be a long one. Once everyone has calmed down enough to sit through a proper explanation, you’re told that John had been waiting outside to tell you about the supply shortage in the first place. There had already been a plan to do so when you all sat down for breakfast, but thanks to the circumstances keeping him awake he had decided to move things up a bit. You’re so damn tired—you've been up for nearly the entire night—but you end up getting roped into a few more hours of painful awareness, anyway. The next hour passes sitting at the kitchen table with John and your brother as they go over what supplies you have left, what you'll need to somehow get, and how long everything you _do_ have will last. It's exhausting and depressing, so you just sort of end up zoning out for most of the discussion as they make lists and addendums to lists and then rewrite it all again.

Unfortunately, you're too bull-headed to actually go to sleep after all the fuss you made—and, in any case, Nepeta still hasn't returned. You don't think you'd be able to sleep peacefully without her curled around you (completely platonically!! she assures you) in your little light-proof blanket fort. She's very warm, you tell yourself. You'd just be cold and uncomfortable.

"—rkat, are you even paying attention?"

Again, you blink (you’ve been doing a lot of that lately) and refocus on the conversation somehow still going on around you. "Yeah, of course—dumbass."

"Hmm?" Kanrki replies, suspicious—you can tell he's trying to start something, but you're not going to rise to the bait. It's unlike him to goad you. Or, rather, it _is_ very much like him—but it's out of character to do it so openly. You wonder not for the first time just how much you missed during the days of your little downward self-pity spiral—just how much the mess of _everything_ is affecting the others.

You're such a selfish bastard, you think—and that _does_ make you hate yourself just a little bit more.

Thankfully, John comes to your rescue. Not that you need him to save you or anything—you can deal with your brother just fine, thank you very much—but his interjection is appreciated, nonetheless. He doesn't even acknowledge Kanrki's comment, and instead plows ahead with a straightforward: "We were just talking about how much fuel we have left."

"Fuel?"

"Yeah, you know—for the generator, and stuff. It runs on gasoline, and we've already burned through almost all of the supply we had stored here at the cabin from past visits. If we don't find a way to get more soon, we're going to have to start siphoning some from the cars—which would leave us without transportation if we end up needing it. "

"Just one more thing to add to the list, then," you retort, annoyed (again) with yourself for not even considering it. What did you think, the power ran on magic? Stupid. It takes almost a full minute for the implications of what could happen if the generator stopped to set in, though—no heat, no way to preserve food, no lights, no way to cook. "Probably near the top."

John nods, scribbling a few things down on the notepad in front of him, and you're tempted to read what you can across the table. You hadn't realized he'd been taking notes—all this pointless daydreaming (or daynightmaring. Is that a thing? You're too tired to think much about it) needs to stop before you end up getting yourself into some kind of real trouble.

Things go on like that for a while, the three of you swapping ideas and formulating a plan. Jane and her dad spend the entire time outside, and every so often you'll hear the telltale signs of complete gastrointestinal upheaval. John flinches at each, like he wants to go help, but you both know there's nothing he can do. He's where he needs to be now, making the best of your situation.

The fact that you'll have to head into the city for what you need goes unspoken until you've exhausted every other topic of conversation. And then, finally, you have to decide who goes— who's willing to risk an encounter with whatever pieces of the population are left—and who stays. By now, most of the major cities have been evacuated, but only so much progress can be made in the middle of a complete societal breakdown. Military focus, according to John, had originally been concentrated on the most people-packed national areas: New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Houston—but, since then, most reports have gone black. Their goal had been containment, but something so widespread, deadly, and fast-spreading can't really be contained. The Washington area had largely been left at the hands of local and state law enforcement—anyone not already affected had scattered.

Nepeta is a logical addition to the group as the most physically capable of your whole little family. John volunteers to act as your guide through the area—he had grown up there, after all—and he himself isn't exactly lacking in the athletic department. You're surprised, though, when John asks you to come too. Kankri protests immediately—he's already almost lost you once, he says, so he won't be sending you off to die again. But you cut him off, because it makes sense—you've got the body of a guard dog now. Might as well start acting the part.

With that, it's settled. You're told to get some rest while you can, but no matter how much you want to just black out for a few hours, you know that's not something you'll be able to do. Nepeta's _still_ missing, and no amount of tossing and turning and stretching and repositioning will get your brain to stop working long enough to catch even the quickest of naps. You waste the next three hours trapped in an endless war with your mind, trying to get up the courage to go looking for her, but the moment you finally decide to actually do it, the image of her devastated face keeps you in place. She wouldn't want to see you anyway.

Eventually, she _does_ reappear, but you don't know it until you step outside to talk with John and see them talking heatedly in the shade of the forest’s edge. They both look tired. Your worry multiplies tenfold, because being _tired_ in a life-or-death situation is absolutely a recipe for disaster.

"Are you certain you will be alright?" You hear Kanrki speak up from beside you, and only then do you realize that you're staring at the two of them a little too intently.

"Yeah, yeah," you wave him off and try to glance toward him, you have to flinch back, wondering if he stands against the sun on purpose. God, it's so fucking bright. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I think we have been over this at least twelve different times, so it would benefit both of us if you kindly _shut the hell up_ and stop worrying."

He sighs, but you refuse to back down. You can taste the first notes of his lecture crackle through the air, but you're too worn down to engage any proper evasive maneuvers. "Regardless, little brother, it is my job to take a concerned interest in your wellbeing. It seems that there has been a slight disconnect between us throughout the entirety of our stay here on the Egberts' property, but I have been loath to mention it before now. I did not want to draw unnecessary attention to the issue, on the grounds that you might take offense to my commen—"

Right around then, you zone out, forcibly ignoring the blocks of text you can feel from your brother's general direction. You don't want to hear what he has to say—it's too little, too late. He's wary of you, you know he is. Or, at the very least, he spends so much time making the effort _not_ to be that it just makes the whole thing that much more obvious. You wonder if this disease did something to your heart, too, because the thought brings a pain to your chest that you don't really want to consider.

You’re brought back to the present when two skinny, knit-covered arms wrap around your shoulders from the side, and it takes a moment for your brain to register that the contact isn’t hostile—it isn't confining. In that moment, though, the threat-protection instincts you _shouldn't have_ start to kick in, and then Kankri is letting go, backing away at the sound of the growl you don't mean to make.

You think you hear an apology as the cabin door slams shut, but you're not sure which of you it came from.

* * *

No one says anything during the almost two hour drive back to John's old city. Actually, no—that's a lie. John talks plenty for the first fifty miles or so, but, once he figures out that neither you nor Nepeta are going to supply any substantial dialogue, he sort of trails off, not actually finishing whatever thought he had started babbling about. It doesn't make a difference to you, because you're content to sit in the back of the Egbert’s stupid minivan and brood. Just outside Seattle, though, Nepeta strikes up some pointless exchange from the passenger seat, and the two of them end up chatting like you're not even there. Once or twice, John makes some effort to include you, but Nepeta plows over his attempts before you have the chance to interject.

Not that you would, because no. Fuck them. And fuck their stupid conversation.

The only upside to the time you spend angry is that is distracts you well enough from how absolutely _terrified_ you are about this whole thing. Shit, you're not a fighter—and you _really, really don't want to run into any of those things again_. Just the thought makes your head spin and your stomach churn and your blood freeze and your breath hitch and _holy shit_. You consider for a moment the fact that, were circumstances different and therapy still a thing that happened, you might end up with a pretty solid PTSD diagnosis. But nope. You don't get the luxury of wimping out, because you've already died once. What doesn't _totally_ kill you is supposed to at least make you stronger—like some lame celestial consolation prize—but apparently the cosmos skipped over you when it was handing out awards.

Because you're _not_ strong. Yeah, now you might be able to bench press more than, say, zero—but you're brain hasn't changed. And, no matter how much undeserved, unseen muscle you suddenly have at your disposal, you still have no idea how to fight. Thinking back, you realize how naive you were, walking out of that shitty barn with nothing more than dingy little scythe to keep the monsters at bay. You got what you deserved for being so cocky, so stupidly courageous. Now, you're doing the exact same thing—walking into a tiger's den—with only two major differences: one, you're not the only idiot marching toward what will probably be your death; and two, you think you know exactly what you're going to be facing. Because, really, there's no way there _won't_ be Infected where you're going. You made that mistake once, and you're not going to do it again.

What the hell were you thinking when you agreed to this? You _weren’t_ thinking, that’s what—too caught up with the idea of sacrificing yourself as one big _fuck you_ to the universe, you didn’t actually make it far enough in the mental process to realize what, exactly, that entailed.

You're so caught up in your internal complaining that you don't realize the car has stopped until the trunk opens and you hear John rummaging around behind you. He and Nepeta are both outside already, and you're still buckled in, staring out at the parking lot of an abandoned Michael's Craft Store like you expect the scenery to start moving again. Maybe you could just stay inside. Maybe they wouldn't notice.

"Hey, Karkat—you okay?" John's voice calls over the back seat, and you want to curl up into a ball and disappear because wow, of _course_ they would notice. That thought makes your heart do weird things.

"Yeah, I'm just peached, thanks." It's impressive how steady your voice sounds, you think, so you busy yourself with untangling the seatbelt and crawl out of the vehicle as slow as (in)humanly possible. "It's not like we're offering ourselves up as sacrifices, or anything. Like suicidal, adrenaline-junky divers swimming in the middle of a shark frenzy—only without that shitty cage to float in. This whole thing is pointless." When no one responds, you decide it doesn't matter whether or not they’re ignoring you—or if they even heard your grumbling in the first place. You don’t want to get into an argument about how very _un_ -pointless this trip is, because you know very well you’ll lose. It’s important you’re all here, and, if given the chance, you probably wouldn’t turn back—but that doesn’t mean you have to _happy_ about your own stupid decision to come along.

As you make your way around the car, you see Nepeta bouncing on the balls of her feet beside John's lower half. He's got himself buried halfway into the trunk, and it takes you a moment to remember what you stored back there: weapons. Or, at least, your makeshift methods of self-defense. After a moment (and several muffled curses about shifting cargo), though, your fingers are wrapping themselves around the hilt of the scythe he’s holding out to you. It's shiny and clean, you notice—like someone had taken the time to wipe it down 'til it glistened even more than when you'd first found it. This is only the second time you've seen it since arriving, and you’d nearly forgotten about it. John _had_ asked you this morning if you wanted to bring it, and you'd nodded without thinking much on the issue. It was a useless weapon, yeah—but a weapon, nonetheless.

An empty backpack is tossed Nepeta's way, and you can already see that she has her hunting knife holstered at her side. She looks fierce and determined and serious and so very unlike herself—it's unsettling. So much so, in fact, that you're more than a little caught off guard when John emerges for the last time.

"Is that a fucking _sledgehammer_?" You gape, completely sure that the thing your best friend is hoisting around like a sack of flour weighs more than you do. John just sort of grins sheepishly as he rests the handle on his shoulder. "That's it—you're the Hulk. I'm friends with the goddamn Incredible Hulk." You manage to pull an actual laugh from him, and even Nepeta relaxes. Not your intention, but not an unwelcome result, either. "You're a freaking doctor and everything. Oh, shit—that's perfect. We’ve got the actual, real-life Bruce Banner on our team. We’re the Avengers—we’re fucking superheroes."

"I'll be sure to keep my temper down, then," he snorts. "As cool as having green skin would be, I don't think I'd be able to pull it off that well. And I'm not a doctor, Karkat—seriously. And Bruce Banner was a physicist, anyway."

"Close enough, dumbass."

After that, the tension doesn't totally disappear, but it melts away somewhat, much to your all-consuming relief. The three of you double check your phones to make sure the GPS apps are still working, and after a brief overview of the area and promises to meet back by the car in two hours with whatever you find, the three of you split up. John grips your shoulders and engulfs you in a tight hug, thanking you for coming along and apologizing, apologizing, apologizing without giving you any kind of explanation as to why. You don't get the chance to pat him awkwardly on the back before he pulls away, though, and can only watch as he does the same for Nepeta. It sounds a little too much like goodbye for your liking, and the farewell leaves a sick taste in your mouth.

You and Nepeta stare at each other in silence, each waiting for the other to make a move as John walks away, disappearing around a corner. You wonder if he knew the two of you needed a moment to sort things out—and if you'll actually _use_ the moment to do just that. No one is saying anything and you're getting kind of nervous. The urge to yell and scream and stomp around and crush her in a hug and then yell some more and maybe rip your hair out for good measure is more than a little overwhelming, but your brain is telling your body to stay frozen, so it does.

Only when the pause finally moves from awkward to uncomfortable to _painful_ does she speak. "I'm still really mad at you, okay? But just don't die—that would make me really sad _and_ angry, and I'm already sad and angry enough, and I think it would make you sad and angry, too. Because dying sucks, and it's enough to make anyone really upset. So _don't die_ , Karkat."

You blink, and you can feel yourself scowl—but it's a familiar feeling, not tight and strained like it has been lately. It's the face you used to wear, and, even though she's never seen it, Nepeta seems to pick up on that. She relaxes a bit more. "Yeah—I would present the same advice to you on a soft, velvety sleep-cushion—if I wasn’t already aware that you could kick the ass of every piece of shit within a hundred miles. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine."

She looks at you funny, and you wonder if you've said something wrong—but then she flashes you a grin. "Yeah, we'll be fine." In a second, she's gone, bounding off in the other direction. You don't know why, but you stand there for a moment, unsure of what to do with yourself.

So wait until you're sure the others are too far away to hear you, and you yell at the sky for no good reason.

* * *

By the time you're done letting out all of the hopelessness you've been building up for the last few weeks, you feel infinitely better. So much better, in fact, that the afternoon doesn’t seem as bleak as it did just minutes before. You can't find it in yourself to be as so fucking _down_ about everything as you were, even if it's just for a little while. That’s all you need, really. And, if the noise you were making didn't attract hoards of flesh-ripping monsters, you figure you'll be pretty safe for the rest of the evening.

With that, you check the time on your phone and head off. You're in charge of picking up fuel—or at least locating it. The empty, red gas containers from the cabin are still in the back of the car, so you figure you'll drive it to wherever you need when the time comes.

On your GPS, John had pointed out several gas stations close by. There's no guarantee all of them will be operable, though—or have what you need—so you decide to make things easier on yourself and check them one by one. A fair amount of wandering goes into locating the first one, and when you do, you're disappointed to see it's out of power. The little Stop-And-Go store has been raided too.

Much to your dismay, the next three yield similar results.

As the afternoon wears on, you feel your temporary gumption slowly fading, giving way to more and more of your usual frustration. You're on your way back empty-handed when your phone beeps—and you don't even bother containing your snort when you see what it is.

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board FUCK YOU, SANTA

EB: hey, guys! any luck so far?

arsenicCatnip [AC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

AC: :33 < *ac nods enthusiastically*

AC: :33 < the harris teeter on south street still has lots of great stuff!!

AC: :33 < and theres a cvs in the shopping center that you furrgot to mention

EB: awesome, nepeta!!

EB: and the cvs is great, because i haven't been able to find much.

EB: we can pick up some of what we need from there. the costco i went looking for was pretty much gutted, unfortunately. 

AC: :33 < *ac is very happy to hear that eb is pleased with her efforts*

AC: :33 < *ac also wonders if eb has heard from cg lately???*

EB: no, which is kind of worrying.

EB: whoops, i mean *eb shakes his head no, and looks worried about his friend.*

EB: karkat if you are being a creep and reading these messages without bothering to respond, now would be a good time to let us know you're alive.

You roll you eyes at no one in particular, and start typing as you walk. The fact that your friends are worrying about you, though, lifts your spirits more than you'll ever admit to anyone.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CG: WOW, TRY NOT TO GET YOUR LADY-PANTIES IN A BUNCH.

CG: I AM FINE. ALTHOUGH I AM ALSO UNFORTUNATELY EMPTY-HANDED.

CG: YOUR CITY HAS GOD-AWFUL ELECTRICAL PROVIDERS, JOHN. I'M BEGINNING TO QUESTION HOW CIVILIZED YOUR COMMUNITY WAS.

EB: karkat! i can assure you that my lady-panties are thoroughly unbunched, thank you.

EB: also, ugh. that's a bummer. we're kind of stuck if we can't find fuel.

AC: :33 < want me to see if i can pawsibly find a gas station around here?

AC: :33 < *ac diligently checks her surroundings because she is certain that she passed one earlier on her quest*

EB: yeah, that would actually be really great!

EB: there should be plenty of places around here, because there are generally a ton of cars on the roads.

EB: have either of you guys started heading back to the parking lot yet?

CG: I HAVE, YEAH.

AC: :33 < me too.

EB: it would probably be better if we stayed spread out so we can cover more ground.

EB: but i also don't think we should go too far, because eventually we'll have to walk all the way back.

CG: IT WOULD BE MORE THAN A LITTLE POINTLESS TO RETRACE OUR STEPS OVER GROUND WE'VE ALREADY COVERED.

EB: what if both of you turned right at the next intersection and kept going that way?

EB: since you're coming from opposite directions you'll be walking opposite paths.

AC: :33 < *ac grins showing all of her wonderfully sharp teeth and gives her furriends two thumbs up*

AC: :33 < sounds great to me!!!

CG: WHAT ABOUT YOU, DUMBASS? WHERE ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO ME GOING, THEN?

CG: I'M PERFECTLY WILLING TO FOLLOW YOUR DIRECTIONS, NO MATTER HOW COUNTERPRODUCTIVE THEY MIGHT END UP BEING, BUT NEPETA WILL BE HEADING BACK YOUR WAY IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY.

CG: WHICH I PROBABLY DO.

EB: nepeta will end up walking parallel to where i just came from, and i'll keep going straight so that you and i end up walking parallel.

AC: :33 < *ac thinks that karkitty and john are thinking too hard about this!!!*

AC: :33 < while you two are sorting out your issues im going to go actually look for stuff!!!!! bye!!!

AC: :33 < *she sticks her tongue out at her furriends and saunters away to complete her mission*

arsenicCatnip [AC] ceased responding to memo

CG: I HAVE ASKED YOU MORE THAN ONCE TO STOP CALLING ME THA

EB: bye!! good lu

CG: FINE, THEN. BYE.

EB: i think we just got ditched.

CG: WOW, THANK YOU. I'M REELING FROM THAT STARTLING REVELATION. HELP, THE KNOWLEDGE IS SLOWLY EATING AWAY AT MY THINK PAN. I'M FALLING INTO THE SPIRAL OF A HOPELESSLY NEVER-ENDING EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.

CG: LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME, JOHN.

CG: THE HORROR.

EB: i think nepeta actually probably definitely has a point, though.

CG: I THINK YOU JUST USED THREE CONTRADICTING ADVERBS IN THE SAME SENTENCE.

EB: i think that is actually probably definitely a thing that happened.

CG: OH MY GOD, JOHN, DO NOT START WI

Suddenly, a sharp, high-pitched noise breaks through the air, and you drop your phone and the scythe, clutching at your head to block out the noise. You'd stopped walking after John had told you not to go any further, but now you’re sinking to your knees as the sound keeps ringing, ringing, ringing through your ears. It's over after just a few seconds, but you think you might have gone deaf (or lost your mind) because it keeps playing over and over and over again, bouncing across your eardrums. You just sort of lay there for a minute or two, curled up on the sidewalk with your arms over your head, until things finally get quiet again. And then you stay still just a little bit longer, trying to get the world back in order.

When you glance back at your phone, you see that the screen has almost shattered—and curse, because _fucking whoops_ this _isn't_ your phone. It's Kankri's—yours is still sitting, smashed to pieces on the side of the road two hundred miles away. And your brother is actually probably _definitely_ going to murder you. Or at least lecture you. Dear God, you hope he murders you.

Through the cracks, though, you can still see the Pesterchum application blinking.

EB: karkat????

EB: what's wrong?? did something happen??

EB: are you okay???

EB: are you there??

EB: oh my god karkat i swear if this is a joke i am going to

EB: i don't know what i'm going to do but please please be okay.

EB: please please please respond please.

EB: i'm coming your way now, okay??? if something happened just stay put or try to find shelter or something.

ectoBiologist [EB] closed memo. 

You stare dumbly at the screen for a while, waiting for the letters to stop spinning around, and, when they finally do, you curse some more. The cracks are covering the little "close window" button, and you can't open a new chat or call John or do _anything_ with this shitty piece of technology, now.

You do stay put, though—or, at least, you try to. As you lay on the ground, you try to piece together what the noise could have been. It was too loud and too sudden for you to really make out the tone, but there aren't many things that can make a sound like that. An air horn? A megaphone? A car?

Yeah, now that you think about it, it definitely sounded like a car—but the Egbert’s stupid-looking minivan is still too far away for the sound of _its_ horn to be that loud. Does that mean...?

You jerk up, blink past the black spots suddenly dancing across your vision, and start to thoroughly freak out. Because you realize that there is a very, very, very high possibility that there are other people here.

_BLAM!_

When the second sound rips through the silence, you're not hit as hard simply because you're _way_ past paying close attention to the things around you. It's enough to make you flinch, though—and pause for a while—but this time you can't figure out what it might have been. Fireworks? Someone hitting a garage door? A really big-ass balloon popping? Some kind of distress signal? Oh, shit—if the horn-blowers set off a distress signal, they might be in trouble or some shit. The kind that would just get loads worse by the time John got his ass to where you are now.

You've never been inclined to help anyone, despite the way you were raised, because you've never had anything to offer. You're not strong, you're not fast, and you're _certainly_ not brave. But you came on this stupid mission out of spite, ready to play the part of a shitty mutant guard dog, and you're pretty sure you've got to live up to that at some point to at least reap a few benefits in the afterlife.

As you stumble to your feet and take off in the direction of the sounds, you wonder if you've lost your mind. It wouldn't surprise you.

* * *

As you pick your way through the deserted city streets, your blood gets colder. Things you wish you couldn’t hear start to become clearer—snarling, hissing, yelling—and a few more popping noises sound in rapid succession. Gunshots? Oh, shit—you really hope they aren't gunshots. You don't turn back, though. You press on, until you turn one final corner and—

_shit shit shit fuck shit fuck no no no no nononono_

Your body freezes and you backtrack, immediately realizing how _stupid_ this whole idea is because _holy shit there are so many of them_ and they're all over the gas station and that car and weren't there supposed to be people around here and—

Your ears pick up the sound behind you just in time to lunge away, and you end up half run-stumbling into the open. The blow you were expecting never comes, though—so you turn around and _shit there's nothing there what the fuck._ You start to back away but it's too late, because, by the time you whip back around to make sure the _things_ didn't see you, at least one is heading your way. Or you think it is.

There’s movement through the windows of the truck, and then _bam!_ the thing is knocked off balance, attention refocused on whatever just shot at it from the other side of the car. Right. Right, there are people here. People that you came to help, but you're just standing in the middle of a war zone like some stupid deer caught in some stupid headlights.

It doesn't take long for you to do the math. You don't know how many humans—people—there are, but you _can_ tell that they'll be overwhelmed pretty soon. You're trapped with them, because there are at least three monsters looking your way, even if they're still concentrating their efforts on whoever is firing from out of sight.

Might as well die doing something good with your life, yeah?

So, before you can talk yourself out of being stupid, you sprint toward the car, not sure what you're planning to do but aware that you can probably help somehow. You get there too fast, though—your brain isn't used to your body working so efficiently, so it doesn't have time to tell everything to _stop_ before your crash into the car. Without thinking, you reach up, grabbing at the luggage rack on the top and pulling yourself up and gripping tightly until your mind catches up point-seven seconds later.

How the _hell_ did you just do that?

You don't have time to answer yourself, though, because when you open your eyes to figure out where you are and who you're with and what's going on, " _Holy fuck!_ " you _know_ these people.

You've never met them in person before, of course, but you'd seen enough pictures on your best friend's cell phone to recognize at least the girl. And, even if you hadn't, the resemblance she holds to her cousin is so freaking _uncanny_ you're pretty sure they could be siblings or something. It occurs to you, then, that John had been talking up the arrival of his extended family for _days_. When were they supposed to get in the area again? You can't remember—God, you wish you had been paying more attention to what he and your brother were talking about earlier.

At the exclamation you're not really even sure you let out, though, the girl turns around, and only then to you see that she’s standing protectively over a boy on the ground. In her eyes, though, you see it—you see her _fear_. Because she's _afraid_ of you because you _look like one of them_ and you will _always look like one of them_ and people you meet will _always sort of maybe be afraid of you_ and—

Someone screams, a name is called, and you dive forward at the same time she does.

Because, yeah, it really is true—you're a just a fucking guard dog. Might as well act the part.

* * *

_one, two, three, four_

_one, two, three_

_one, two_

_one_

You remember once, early on when you and Nepeta first started staying out late, she had tried to teach you how to hunt. She had done it all her life—hunted, that is—but it had always been different. Forced, somewhat, because she fought with knives for claws and couldn’t kill beasts like they deserved—with dignity, she said. With dignity to a predator against which they had some chance to win. She had confided you that she'd always wanted to fight like an animal, because she'd always felt more at home in the wild. Maybe that's why she was so happy—so, so happy when you both went out that first night. When you'd found the bear. When she'd _killed_ the bear.

You had thrown up. She had laughed, covered in blood and looking every bit like the demons from your nightmares.

You refused to go out for nearly a week after that, but you remembered what she'd told you, anyway.

 _Breathe_ , she'd said. _Breathe slower and slower and slower until you can't hear your heart beating and then_ listen _to the world around you. Because the world is always listening to us and we never stop long enough to pay it back the favor. That's how you hunt. You listen, and when you listen hard enough, you can hear every creak of its bones and every pulse in its veins and every weakness it’s got trapped in its stupid, awesome body._

God, you'd been so terrified of her after that.

Now, though, you let yourself go. You coil your legs and let the bubble of forced temporal continuity you've been living in since Christmas fade out through your toes. You let the world drift away, blurring at the sides of your vision, and you let your breathing slow, slow, slow ‘til you lose track of your heartbeat.

And then you can hear the blood pumping through _its_ veins. And you can hear the creak of _its_ joints. And you can hear the hitch of _its_ lungs.

And you can hear its weakness.

You don't know when time starts flowing normally again—you don't know if it ever even stopped. But one moment you're listening to the black, black, black flowing in its neck and the next you're _tasting_ it. It's pouring from your mouth and oozing through your teeth, and it’s so horrible and familiar you feel your stomach lurch. But you don't let go—you keep your mismatched jaws on its neck and curl your fingers—your _claws_ —into its skin and latch on while it thrashes and tears at you and throws you forward and backward and around. You feel your back hit something, but you don't even spare a moment to think about what it could be because the growling in your ears is _so loud_ that it blocks out everything and nothing and you're not exactly sure which one of you it's coming from. Or if it's coming from _both_ of you.

It stumbles to a stop for less than a second, but that's all the time you need—because you use the leverage you've got and push against him and pull your head back and _tear_ and bite and _tear_ and bite _and tear and bite and tear and—_

Then you've got nothing left to clamp your teeth on, because its head is tipping off its shoulders and it’s falling to the ground, dead, dead, dead as you go with it. You hit the ground in a pile of slick, squishing flesh and limbs, unsure of what to do with yourself for a moment. Because that was _too easy_ and you actually possibly definitely want to do it again.

So you do.

Vaguely, you can hear people shouting, bullets firing—but your brain is working in overdrive, focused on the monsters around you because you need to hurt, kill, _help, save, protect!_ And you won't let anything stop you. Nothing can stop you. You're invincible, ripping through flesh and muscle and bone—you've got an advantage that they don't have. You have your mind—your mind! So you can reason, you can predict, you can plan. You're deadly and horrible and wonderful and for the first time in such a long time you feel _alive_.

And then, just like that, it's over. You're kneeled over the mangled corpse of a _thing_ , ready to take on your next target, when you sense someone standing behind you. Before you get the chance to swipe at it—to kill it—though, there are hands on your shoulders. Hands too small, too gentle. They make you pause for a moment and take the time to glance around—to really _see_.

There's blood everywhere, slick and bubbling black over pavement just as dark, streaked across gas pumps and the broken glass windows of the little store and the big garage doors. More than half the bodies aren't even recognizable anymore, ripped open and torn to shreds and pieces. It all seems surreal, like a scene from some slasher movie, so you just sort of blink.

"...Karkat?" The voice behind you is quiet, and the hands are still on your shoulders—your damp, heavy shoulders, covered in a shirt saturated thick with bodily fluids of the fallen. The sound brings you back to your senses, though, and you twist your head around, still blinking as the adrenaline haze fades from your vision too slowly for your liking.

Nepeta's eyes are big and sad, and you see that she's covered in blood, too. But she's not looking down at you with an ounce of fear. "... _fuck_ ," it comes out in one long, quiet breath because you finally realize how muted everything is without the shrieking of the grey beasts. You don't really know what you're trying to say, but you think the statement captures the mood rather well.

Behind her, you can see that the humans— _no_ , that your friend and his family are still huddled around the car, surrounded by bullet shells and brain bits. But something is wrong. You can tell by the way the old man is cradling the white-haired woman in his arms; by the way John is talking with them both, all hand gestures and serious-faced worry. Jade and the kid—Jake, you think—are nowhere in sight. You start to stand, wanting to join them, but Nepeta's hands are still on your shoulders and she stops you. "I don't think we should be over there right now," she shakes her head, looking a little unsure, herself.

You're still feeling numb, so when you ask: "What's going on?" the words don't really register. It occurs to you then that you're still standing with a mutilated corpse between your legs and there's black blood dripping off your chin—so you promptly bend over and heave before she has the chance to answer. Before you know it, you're on your hands and knees, throwing up whatever sludge you managed to swallow—but the whole thing puts you right next to the dead, torn-up mess and that makes your stomach lurch again. All the while, Nepeta just rubs your back and makes worried noises, and you wonder how she can stand to be around you. You're a devil—a monster through and through. You're no better than these _things_.

After a moment, you realize John has moved to your side, too. All the retching made your nose burn and your eyes water, but through your blurred, wet vision you can see that his eyes are red and puffy, too. “Karkat, oh God, Karkat. Are you hurt anywhere? Like, open wounds or anything? You're covered in this stuff, shit—it's probably good that you're getting it all out of your system. Everything. Like, a natural stomach pump. I know it sucks, but—God—I just don't know how this much could affect your body." He keeps talking, sitting you back as he checks your pupils and presses on your neck and tells you not to fight the urge to throw up if it comes again, and then hands you a bottle of water out of _nowhere_ and tells you to rinse and spit until there's no more blood in your mouth—but you can see that his hands are shaking. "The same goes for you, Nepeta. Here—yeah. I don't know what would have happened if you guys hadn't been here... I should probably get back now. Yeah. I'm just so glad you're okay."

You watch him race back over to the old woman's side, and, after stiffly following his instructions, you ask Nepeta your question again. She spits out a jet of murky-grey water and shakes her head. "I don't know the whole story even though I watched it happen, but I think one of these guys—" she kicks the corpse beside you for emphasis "—got her in the side. Like, ripped out this whole chunk of her stomach and stuff. I don't... I don't think John can fix her the same way he fixed us." You don't say anything, but you look over at your best friend and his grandfather just in time to see the old man touch his forehead to the woman's, and a black-red-bloody, wrinkled hand reach up toward John. You close your eyes and puke again.

* * *

By now, your ethical standards have taken up a permanent residence in that moral gray area labeled _survival of the fittest_ , and, quite frankly, you're just too tired to think much about right versus wrong anymore. There isn't more than a moment of hesitation before you break down the door of a small, empty townhouse and make good use of its showers. Inside, though, there aren’t any clothes your size, so Nepeta ends up rummaging through the next building down in search of something for you to wear. She says not to worry about more of those monsters heading your way, because animals naturally avoid places mucked up with the blood of their own kind. It just screams _predator_ , and very few creatures are stupid enough to walk right into a place they think they'll be killed. It's a pretty great bluff, you think, because you don't know if you'll have the energy to do anything other than pass out of you see another one.

Even looking in the fogged-up bathroom mirror after you’re clean is hard.

You meet back up with the others in the same parking lot you left John's car. They've moved the Harleys' truck there, too, and everyone—the younger pair, included—is just sort of sitting around when you and Nepeta arrive. You'd been ordered by your best friend to get as clean as possible, but no one else had been as covered in the stuff as you two.

In the end, it becomes clear that you can't take Grandma's body back to the campsite, so you decide to bury her just outside the city, instead. To prevent any starving thing from digging up her corpse for a snack, though, you send her off the same way you did Nepeta's sister—with a funeral pyre fit for the greatest of Norse kings. Everyone cries, even you, despite the fact that you'd never met the woman in your life. You can't decide if she's the one you're really crying for, though.

It's not the last death you'll have to witness or the last pile of wood you'll have to build, no matter how much you wish it could be. Because three months later, when the internet finally goes down and all central power shuts off, you all have to face the realization that you _did_ survive the apocalypse—but that what comes _after_ the end of the world is so, so much scarier.

**END OF PART I**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, part one is finished! I'm super happy, because now we can get into the real heavy-duty plot stuff! (Drama! Action! Romance!) This had all originally been a five-part prologue, just to put things in perspective. Next chapter I'll introduce some the most important characters in this whole story (finally! Striders!) so just sit tight until then. 
> 
> A huge thanks to [jackfrostitution](http://jackfrostitution.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this chapter! 
> 
> As always, you can contact me on my personal tumblr [{ egbertiian }](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/). See you guys again soon! 
> 
> (And don't forget to check out Karkat's theme song, [_Human_ by Daughter](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbCeyb9okac)!!)


	6. Part II: A Better Place

**== > BE THE SURVIVOR**

**== > WATCH EVERYTHING UNFOLD**

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and the moment you're forced to finally come to terms with the fact life as you know it has almost entirely ceased to exist, time starts moving faster than a hundred miles per hour. Cut off from everything—although there's not much left to be cut off from—the days and nights and weeks and months start to blur together.

It's not long after the world goes dark that you realize your complete dependence on technology for navigation has essentially screwed you over. Without the internet to guide your way the bare highways and back-roads suddenly feel like a maze, and the woods become almost entirely impossible to figure out. You make do with the paper maps you manage to pilfer from rest stops and gas stations, but the first few months are spent relatively blind to your surroundings. 

And, as you figure out sometime near the end of March during a supply run back to Seattle, with no central power to keep things running, gas pumps have become essentially unusable. You're left without easy access to fuel. It doesn't take long for Grandpa Harley to suggest siphoning what's left from the tanks of whatever cars are still sitting around the city, but nothing lasts forever. When July finally rolls around, you're forced to start fanning out even farther than your home city in search of what you need.

By the end of your summer, though, your raids have managed to attract the attention of the few stragglers still left hiding in their basements or attics, and you close out the first year with four dozen makeshift shelters surrounding the cabin. Eventually, your hideout becomes a hub for whatever living activity is left. Culture and race and religion don’t hold as much meaning as they used to, because suddenly the only labels you need to qualify for survival are _human_ and _uninfected_. The vaccine took lives indiscriminately, so you’re all refugees, all down on the same level for once. You never thought you'd see the day when a ragtag group of four West-coast mobsters and members of Native American royalty ate at the same dinner table, but that becomes every meal for you after a while. The initial novelty of it all wears off when you realize how depressing it is that equality came at such a high price. 

As for your family, Nepeta takes a particular liking to certain man from the latter bunch—a Lakota who had been trying to save up enough money to study robotics in college—much to your worried amusement and Karkat's unspoken panic. When your best friend makes the _official_ announcement and he and your little hunter are _officially_ sharing a tent even more _officially_ than they already were, you’re pretty sure it wasn’t just for his sake. As time goes on and the population you have to feed grows, though, Nepeta starts spending less and less time on at the campground. She takes it upon herself to lead almost every hunting, raiding, and scouting party you send out, and months pass without a word from her each time she, Grandpa Harley, and their team leaves.

By the end of the second year, the size of your camp has nearly tripled, but things aren't operating as smoothly as you'd like. No one ever officially declares you a "leader" of any kind—it's just sort of an unspoken _thing_ that people respect you, though you're not really aware you hold any kind of real authority until long after any tensions are resolved. You just sort of assume people—refugees from the global holocaust you all survived—listen to what you have to say because you are, to the best of your knowledge, one of the only medical professionals left alive. Most doctors and medics and nurses had been the first killed because they'd been rushed on-scene during the first real attacks and were practically living in the overpopulated hospitals. You, on the other hand, were a coward—you'd run off to save your own skin, and people somehow found reason to respect you for it.

Karkat and Nepeta aren’t the last people you save from their own blood, but you're naive enough to think that everyone could learn to get _past_ the differences because there’s almost _no one left_ to hate. But humans can be horrible and petty, even when everyone has the same goal in mind.

You don't really even realize the split is a thing that's happening until, suddenly, it _is_. Like toddlers, the people you've helped recover from attacks and the people who managed to make their way without much incident are drawing lines in the sand between their tents, refusing to sleep near one another and launching attacks over some invisible wall. The “normal humans” you pull out of the cracks are scared of the people Karkat and Nepeta start to take under their wings, thrown off by their appearance and habits and strange sleeping schedules, terrified that they'll be killed at night when the Cured don't sleep. Your assurances work for a while, but suspicion and mistrust are inevitable. For both groups, you're too biased.

The problem comes to a head one night during the second October you spend trapped in the woods. By the light of a campfire, two men—one tan and one gray—end up at blows over something you don't remember in the weeks to come. Insults fly, accusations are made, and the tension piles on thick as a crowd gathers. It draws the attention of you and Karkat away from your own meals, but, before you can figure out what to do, your best friend is between them both, making some curse-laden speech about humanity and equality that basically boils down to _Get your shit together, you bunch of stark-raving douchebags. We're stuck here in this fucked-up world whether we like it or not, so we might as well at least try to be civil and not kill each other. If you've got a problem—_ he'd pointed to the dark-haired, razor-toothed one— _come to me, and if you've got a problem—_ then he'd gestured over to the other man— _go bitch about it to John. We'll deal with your shit together, like goddamn mature adults, because apparently you're too high and mighty to handle whatever it is yourselves_.

And that had been that.

Shortly thereafter, official committees and teams under the direction of the two of you are established to keep order. Both camps are separated once and for all, and only those willing to work with members from each are selected to help out with major duties like perimeter security, scouting, general care and provision tracking, and—later on—resource development. By the end of that December, you're operating less like a summer camp and more like the world’s smallest city-state.

Peace never lasts, though, and soon it becomes clear you can't stay holed up in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest forever. Your first Washington state winters are a nightmare you only manage to survive by sheer luck, and the first snowstorm your second year nearly wipes you off the map. The cold doesn't bother Karkat's group as much as it does yours, though; they can actually leave the heat of whatever dying fires you can keep alight without freezing to death in the less than hour, so most provisional duties are passed on to them for the few weeks you’re just frantically trying to keep everyone alive. You also discover the Infected are similarly undaunted by the snow.

All in all, the season is hard. Most of the older members of your group don't make it, your father included. Your entire world crumbles, and it takes almost a year for you to get back up on your feet—not than many people realize it. You can't afford to fall, because if you go so does everything you've built. Jane creeps into your bed at night to cry, you just hold onto her tighter than you ever have before. If your own chest starts heaving, neither of you mention it.

In response, Karkat, Jake, and Equius—a member of your camp from the group of Native Americans you take in during the first year—begin work on a tentative relocation plan. Paper maps are all well and good for supply run navigation through populated areas, but they're relatively useless for the kind of off-grid view you'll need to find a new, safer place to live. Most satellites, the three discover, are still relatively operational—but actually connecting large-scale to the signals they're still bouncing out becomes a challenge. One wireless tower is successfully repaired, but leftover automated security from the original company it belonged to shuts down your whole system after less than a day, and progress screeches to a halt as they try to clean up the mess.

Then, a quarter-way though the third year, while ransacking the third in a long string of abandoned rural neighborhoods along the Oregon-Nevada border, Nepeta, Grandpa Harley, and their team uncover the seventeen-year-old son of two extreme couponers holed up in a technological hub that probably could have sent NASA's best computer scientists into fits. While he's physically weak from months without bothering to venture outside, his mind is sharp, and by August, Sollux has you up and running like nothing happened in the first place. There are a few complications in getting him across the nearly six hundred miles back to base, though; the group returns heavily wounded—your new addition, included—and without your grandfather. Jade steps up to fill the position he leaves behind, but things are never quite the same for her and Jake after that.

Over the next few months, teams are sent out in every direction to repair as many internet towers as they can, and soon almost half of Washington is back online. You collect a few more straggling survivors you hadn’t yet been able to dig out, and supply runs can move faster and more efficiently with the added benefit of battery-operated, mobile wireless routers to keep everyone connected and on track via cell phone.

The team can't work miracles, though, so the term "phone" remains a pretty loosely used term; with only a spotty internet connection to run on, they aren't much more than chat-based communication devices. Pesterchum becomes your basis for _everything_ , and a number of raiding parties are sent out with the electronics stores specifically in mind. Everyone who doesn't already have one is given a phone or an iPod or whatever and told to create a chumhandle, and the Pesterchum servers are roped completely under the communication team's control. Suddenly, the world seems a whole lot more manageable because everything's not so _big_ anymore.

Just as winter starts to roll in again, the search for a new place to stay kicks back into high gear. Nothing comes up, though, and you're forced to endure another December held captive under eight feet of snow. Your numbers have grown to nearly five hundred in total, split at a 2:5 ratio between Karkat's camp and yours in terms of population. What they lack in quantity they make up for in strength—but you're convinced the numbers will have flipped by the end of the winter if you can't keep everyone alive somehow.

Christmas and New Years pass without much to celebrate, but in the middle of February the months of hard work pay off almost completely by accident. While setting up an emergency automatic-connection feature on the application, Sollux somehow manages to get himself counter-hacked by an unknown IP address, and, when you find him at awake noon the next day instead of sleeping, he's chatting up a storm of technical jargon with the glaringly-pink text of an unknown chumhandle. Almost overnight, everything changes.

You'd never been an avid fantasy reader during your days as a student, but some sensations were hard for even you to ignore. During your last few years of middle school, Rose Lalonde had been the biggest name across every tabloid, both for her novels and her _own_ unique back story. The latest music and TV news headlines were replaced by variations of _Openly-lesbian teen mother drops out of high school at age fifteen, only to make millions two years later on her New York Times bestselling-series “Complacency of the Learned”_ , and by the end of your eighth grade year Rose Lalonde had become the next Stephanie Meyer. She had stormed the entertainment world in a flash, before disappearing just as quickly as she had come. It was a mystery you'd never cared much to involve yourself in, but, over the next few days, it becomes your new reality.

After ducking out of the media spotlight, Rose had hidden herself away to raise her daughter and finish her books, after which she had finished high school and begun teaching classes at a small, experimental college funded largely by her own mother—a prominent astrophysicist you'd only read about in journals and science articles. She lived among the students and teachers, and brought her little girl up into the world of intellectuals. When the first evacuations were called, the school had been mostly empty for winter break, leaving the pair and several others relatively isolated on campus. Not having any other safe place to go, they had opted to stay. 

By chatting almost daily with the author and her daughter, you learn that the Skaian University of Arts and Sciences is located in the northwestern-most corner of the United States, miles away from any other major outcrop of civilization. It’s completely self-sufficient thanks to hydro-electrical generators build under a nearby waterfall, and most of the facilities didn't lose power when everything else crashed—apparently, their internet has been active for years. There is plenty of room for you, she says. You almost break down in tears.

Getting everyone packed up and ready to move takes a bit of work, and the journey is even longer. With no way to easily transport everyone by vehicle, you set off in groups on foot, but all the careful planning in the world can’t ensure that everyone arrives safely. One of the first things you do at your new home is designate a new markeryard for those you lose along the way. (When Roxy asks you why you don't call it a graveyard, you tell her it's because there are no graves—the most respect you can give a body these days is a funeral pyre. Anything you bury will just be dug up and eaten—though you leave that last part off your explanation.)

All-in-all, though, life improves drastically once you're settled in. With Equius's help, most of the dining hall equipment is brought back to life, and two more buildings are hooked up with power. There isn't enough room for everyone to sleep comfortably indoors year-round, but after nearly three years of living under the stars, there isn't much complaining when you break the news.

As one of the buildings still with power, the biology labs are also in fairly good condition, if a bit dusty from years of disuse. You immediately stake your claim on those, and, with Karkat's help, dive back into researching the thing you’re up against. You had never stopped collecting what information you could in hopes that someday you'd be able to use it, and now you’re glad for that little bit of optimism. Some of the other rooms in the building are cleared out, as well, and you set up a makeshift infirmary under your care.

With a more permanent base settled, the wide-range alert system is restarted to direct anyone else left alive to your location. As it turns out, some camps established by military evacuation squads are still spread out in places your own squad teams never actually crossed, and you close out the fourth year with a total of almost six hundred refugees. By then, most people to survive the initial outbreak have either died or been found, so additions taper off after that. Your numbers stay nearly constant for the next two years.

* * *

**[4/13/37]**

Your name is still JOHN EGBERT, but you are now TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD. Six years ago, your entire civilization COLLAPSED within the span of THREE MONTHS, leaving you and your family some of the ONLY SURVIVORS. You managed to stay alive because you had been in CLOSE CONTACT with the THING that would eventually WIPE OUT three-fourths of the human population, and have since used your resources to help anyone else you've come across. Unfortunately, this has given everyone the widespread impression that you have all of the answers to EVERY PROBLEM EVER, which you most certainly do not. So, you've taken up the rather unfortunate habit of HIDING from your responsibilities by holing up in your laboratory with a hand-drawn DO NOT DISTURB sign taped to the door.

It works just fine to keep people who aren't immediately dying out of your hair, but your family has long-since caught on to your little charade and refuses to be ignored. Half an hour ago, you went so far as to actually lock yourself in, and your phone hasn't stopped beeping since. You're tempted to turn it off, but the fear of a real emergency coming up keeps you from actually doing so—much to your complete, utter dismay.

— tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 19:29 — 

TG: omg johnnn

TG: johnnnnnnn

TG: johnnnnnnnnnnnn

TG: youre bein such a big baby john

TG: whiny baby john

TG: i know ur there

TG: i can see you thru the window just sitting all grumpy glaring at your phone

TG: do you think the phone is going to bite you john??? because the phone wont hurt you but i might when you finally come out

TG: this is ridiculous and stupid

TG: ur not even doin any real wok

TG: work*

TG: shame on you john egbert

TG: just answer me so i can at leas tgive them a reason why you dont wanna come

TG: its a party john parties are meant to be fun!!!

TG: and u are suckin all the fun outof it just by not being there

TG: i wont stop mesesaging you until u look up or answer or leave or something

TG: messaging*

TG: this is so dumb

TG: johnnnnnnnn

TG: johnnnnn

TG: y r u doin this 2 me

TG: you kjnow i cant leave until you do cause theyre not goin to let me back in w/o u

TG: im on your side here

TG: i didnt want to come get you cause i knew you didnt wanna go but they kept insisitin!!!

TG: the whole thing is stupid anyway cause its ur birthday and you should be able to do what you want even if its abandon the wonderful gathering we have collected for u in your honor

TG: theres food too

TG: john its cold out here

TG: johnnnn

EB: if you're cold, why are you still standing outside?

TG: he speaks!!!

TG: thank u for blessin me with ur presence finally

TG: also im not goin to come inside bc the mission given to me by ur sis was to keep an eye on you and thats what im doin

TG: i cant see u from the hallway cause there arent any windows inside from there

TG: im a good lil scout and i am going to sit out here and freeze my cutie butt off until you decide to shape up and stop bein a big whiny loser!!!!

Sure enough, a slow, steady tapping starts up from what corner of the room, and you don't have to look to know that Roxy is standing there, all bundled up and disgruntled, knocking on the glass window.

TG: i dont know y ur makin suck a big deal out of this

TG: such*

TG: at the very least you can pretend its not a party for u and just let everyone else have their fun

TG: you should have seen janey plannin this whole thing

TG: she was like soooo excited about it all and even saved up enough eggs to bake you a real cake

TG: except whoops that was supposed to be a surprise

TG: if ur not going to play nice at least act like youre excited for her sake ok??

EB: ugh, fine.

EB: i'll meet you out front.

TG: yes!!! i knew i could convince u

— tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 19:41 — 

The knocking stops, and you take a much-needed moment to sigh and just sort of rest your face on your desk. You know you're being more than a little bit selfish, but you really, _really_ don't want to go to the not-so-little birthday get-together your family and friends have set up for you. It’s not that you don't appreciate the work they put into the whole thing. Really, you're grateful! And more than a little flattered that they love you as much as they do. But you've figured out over the years that big events like this—like _your_ birthday, for some weird, unnecessary reason—are just that: big. Almost everyone gets involved, and it's one of those few times where people from both camps actually make some sort of effort to actually get along. And that part of the whole thing is great! But you know that the minute you step into wherever they've decided to set things up this year, you'll be the center of attention.

God, you _hate_ being the center of attention.

A high-pitched whine sounds outside the locked door, and you heave yourself up out of your chair. As slow as you possibly can, you gather up your jacket, hat, and the scarf Rose knit for you as a welcoming present when you first met, and shuffle toward the door—only to be nearly toppled the minute you open it by a little head of blonde hair who had, apparently, been pressed right up against the wood.

" _Oof_ , Roxy!" You laugh, because instead of standing back up the fourteen-year-old just leans face-first on your chest, giggling belatedly at _something_.

"I can't _move_ 'cause I'm all frozen from standing outside for so long," she sighs dramatically into your shirt, wrapping her arms around your waist. "You're just going to have to carry me all the way back, Mr. Big Strong Leader, 'cause I don't think I'm gonna to make it if you don't."

You huff, unmoved by her pitiful pleas. "Come on, Roxy—weren't you the one full of complaints about me not getting up fast enough?"

" _Carry me!_ "

"What are you, five?"

" _Jooohn_..."

" _Rox-eee_..."

"Who's the five year old now, huh?"

"Oh, geez—real mature. Do you see my eyes, Roxy? Do you see how hard I'm rolling them?"

"Mhmm, _so_ hard."

"Yeah, so har— _Roxy!_ " You sputter as two hands snake around to squeeze your butt, and your face goes red as she just laughs and laughs and laughs into your shirt. In the end, you _do_ end up carrying her piggy-back style—but only because she can't stop giggling long enough to actually stand up straight. By the time you make it across the snow-covered campus to the dining hall by her direction, she's still snorting your ear, draped across your shoulders. Much to your all-consuming relief, though, there isn't a hint of alcohol on her—she's just _happy_. It warms you up from your insides out, and you wonder not for the first time at the affect this not-so-little girl has on you. She's the one purely _good_ thing left in the world, you think—she doesn't remember much of what the world was like before everything went up in smoke, so she's grown up without the lingering resentment that most teenagers and adults left hold in their hearts. It's refreshing and wonderful, and you're lucky enough that she's taken such a liking to you.

Even before you make it to the cafeteria doors, you can hear the roar of chatting and laughter from outside. The place is big enough to fit everyone comfortably when you're split up, but, on evenings like when people make an effort to play nice, things get just a bit tight. There are a few members of Karkat's camp milling around the entrance as you approach, and they greet you with smiles and well-wishes and waves, all of which you return whole-heartedly. Roxy doesn't let you stall for long, though, and soon she's kicking your side, throwing out farewells on your behalf. After a quick apology, you finally steel yourself and actually open the door, leaving behind the frozen outside and the chuckles that follow in your wake.

A few people inside turn to complain about the draft, but, the minute they see who you are, their reaction is much the same. Chatter spreads, handshakes are exchanged, hugs are given—all with Roxy still on your back—and, eventually, you're shuffled along to where those of your family still on base are awaiting your arrival.

The commotion you unintentionally make attracts their attention before you see them, so, by the time the crowd parts enough to let you through to the table they're surrounding, most of them are already on their feet. You spot Jane just before she spots you, though, so you get to see her expression go from lost and sad to overly-excited. You wonder why you decided to wait so long. Then, of course, her eyebrows scrunch up and she marches right over to you, not even pausing before she smacks at your poor, abused hip. " _John!_ What took you so long? I thought you weren't going to show up!"

Roxy starts squirming, and you bend down to let her off your back so she can scurry over to her mother and the rest. The action puts you directly at eye-level with your sister, and you take a moment to appreciate how much she's grown. At seventeen, she's filled out into a fine, strong young woman with short-cut dark hair and the same glasses she's had since middle school. She huffs, blowing hot air in your face enough to ruffle your own messy bangs, and you just sort of grin at her. "Sorry—I thought I'd keep you guys in suspense for a while, ‘nd let you get the fun started without me around to drag you down."

She huffs again and crosses her arms, "Apology not accepted," but you only laugh and stand up straight, ruffling her hair for good measure. You know she's not _really_ mad at you—just annoyed, but overall fairly happy that you did actually come. Roxy was right—this party is just as much for her as it is you, simply because your sister _loves_ big get-togethers like this. They make people happy, she says. 

Jane lets out an aggravated whine at you for messing up her hair, but you don't get the chance to snort something back before there's a hand slapped on your shoulder and you’re pulled into a crushing hug you aren't quite prepared for. If Jane has grown over the past few years, the difference in your cousin makes him almost unrecognizable. At sixteen, Jake is just riding off the end of puberty, a time during which he shot up at least two feet and filled out half as much. While isn't nearly as built as you are, he certainly isn't as skinny as he used to be, and—though the you’re eye-to-eye now—you get the feeling he'll be taller than you when he finally stops growing.

"Well, look who it is! Glad you finally decided to come ‘round, chap," he laughs, accent still half-alive even after all these years away from his home across the Atlantic.

Honestly, though, you're a bit surprised to see him. "Jake! What are you doing here? Not that I'm not happy to see you or anything, but isn't it your week to work the perimeter?"

"Ah, Mr. Slick was kind enough to offer up a trade for this evening—a onetime offer, his shift for mine, the man said. I'd have been a fool to pass up the chance!" He laughs, and you snort, trying to imagine how that conversation went. No matter what kind of front the middle-aged mobster put up, you'd all learned years ago that he had a decent-sized soft spot for kids—which, according to him, most of you were. Jake, for his part, keeps chattering on about how you missed dinner as he pushes you toward the others, but you tune him out when you notice that Jane has disappeared.

Before you know it, you're being ushered into a seat at the head of the table, between Rose and Karkat. Your best friend glares you down, though, and shoves a plate of food in front of you before you’re settled in. "Eat so you don't die from starvation, or something. You've skipped out for the past week, from what I've heard—don't make me shove this down your throat, because I will if I have to, dumbass," he hisses, but underneath the scowl you can see he's genuinely concerned. Which he doesn’t have to be, _gosh_.

"Aw, Karkat—you _do_ care!" you chuckle, nudging his shoulder with your own. "But, really—it's no big deal. I've just been busy, that's all." And you have; in a world where even the smallest mistake could mean the difference between life and death, you're not stupid enough to miss meals on purpose. You just... forget sometimes, when you're caught up working in your lab, taking care of your patients, or just generally trying to keep everyone from killing each other. Karkat grumbles while you dig in, and Rose graces you with an indulgent smile.

"You really should take better care of yourself," she says, and she sounds so mature and motherly that you forget not for the first time that she's only four years older than you. Kankri nods sagely from across the table, like the idea had been his the entire time.

You roll your eyes, and Jake laughs loudly again, taking one of the empty chairs as he answers for you. "The day we get John to take a break long enough to give himself just a spot of attention is the day I eat my pistols, I swear it." Karkat winces at his volume, which somehow carries over even the cacophony of people-noises you know he already isn't particularly comfortable being around in the first place.

"And then we'll throw another shitty party, because it'll also be the day you _shut the fuck up_ and leave us in peace. I hope you choke on those damn pistols."

There's a lot of dramatic gasping from Jake's general direction, and snickers waft up from where Sollux and Roxy are seated next to each other. Kankri starts saying something about friendly conduct and setting good examples for everyone, but Jake’s too busy emphasizing how scandalized he is by Karkat’s opinion of him to pay much attention.

Things carry on like that for a bit, filled with chatter and laughter and half-hearted insults as you scarf down the weak-but-satisfying stew your sister's team must have prepared for everyone's dinner-and-or-breakfast. There isn't much to it, but you know the last scouting group sent out will be returning in a few days with fresh supplies to restock what's been dwindling. It's not long before Jane reappears, though, at which point she comes up behind you and tells you to close your eyes. You do, of course, and there's a bit of shuffling around before you're told to open them again. She sounds so excited, you can't help but grin.

The cake is simple, only one layer of pastry half-frosted a shade of light blue, and there aren't nearly twenty-five candles stuck into it—but it's wonderful, and you tell her so over and over and over again. Even if sweets have never been your favorite, you know that Jane has always loved to bake—just like your dad. You tell her that, too—that he would have been proud to see it, and she promptly bursts into tears so you pull her into your lap like she's five again. They're happy tears, though, because she knows you're right and you know you're right and _wow_ you really miss your dad.

At some point during your little moment of familial drama, though, Karkat and Rose get the room to quiet down—which you notice just in time to see most members of Karkat's camp cover their ears and join in singing what could definitely go down in history as the most off key, terribly _wonderful_ rendition of "Happy Birthday" ever in the history of forever. You bury your face in Jane's back, but she shoves you and makes you blow out the candles as Jake lights them.

After that, the real festivities begin. Tables are pushed and stacked against the walls, and the few instruments salvaged over the years are brought out. You participate in one dance only—an obligatory birthday YMCA shaken to the tune of three acoustic guitars, one violin, and a set of improvised table-drums—before settling back down to drink in the chaos. Roxy forces everyone from your group up at least once to dance with her, but manages to rope Jake into more rounds than anyone.

After a while, though, your cousin excuses himself to go check on the guards he has stationed around the borders as they switch shifts. With Jade away on a supply run, he’s taken half of her place as acting head of security. You send him off with a good-natured slap on the back, and he disappears with Karkat's shouting not to forget tonight's meeting, god damn it, on his heels. You doubt he will—tonight, Jade and Nepeta’s raiding party will be online for their last call in. He wouldn't miss it.

You don't stay much longer, either. By the time you crush Jane, Rose, and Roxy in four-way hug and smother them with surprisingly-heartfelt _thank you_ s, most members of your camp have scurried back to the gutted, blanket-stuffed administration building where everyone’s packed until the weather warms up. You offer to help clean, but they turn you away and rope Kankri into the job, instead. "It's your birthday—that means no chores for you, even if you deserve to do them," Jane says, and you just laugh and make some comment about how the work never really stops as you step back outside.

* * *

You end up spending the next few hours milling about the infirmary, chatting with your patients and administering what care you can. Early on—back when you still took part in supply runs—you'd convinced your cousin to let you raid a bookstore or three; thanks to that, the university's resources, and experience, you’ve managed picked up more than your fair share of the medical knowledge you would have gained if you’d gotten the chance to finish school. You aren't perfect—no one is, really—but you're the best left. Winter colds and allergies and the occasional injury aside, though, no one has managed to fall horribly sick this year, and for that you're grateful.

It’s nearly midnight when you bundle yourself back up to venture out again, and you leave Tavros—a quiet, nineteen-year-old boy from the same Native American reservation as most of your first refugees, and your only helper—to handle what's left to do. The executive meeting will take place, as it always does, in the library tech lab—the base of operations for the communications team under Karkat's care. You're one of the last to arrive, as usual, and most of the team leaders still on base are already seated around the long conference table in around which most of the monitors in the room are centered. The happy, carefree mood from dinner is nearly gone, and most everyone—even the members of Karkat's camp—looks tired.

Roxy has long-since been put to bed, but Rose and Jane are sitting next to one another, hands folded neatly as they wait for things to get started. Your sister’s legs are swinging under her chair, though, where her feet don't quite touch the floor—so you know she's just as anxious as you are to hear from your cousin and her team. After your father passed away, Jane had taken up his duties as head of provision management and general care—a job that Rose had graciously offered to share. Feferi—a bubbly twenty-two-year-old from one of the military refugee encampments—is braiding her long, black hair next to them. As a member of the Karkat’s camp, she works closely with Jane and Rose to make sure food is prepared and supplies are divided proportionately fair between the two groups, and nothing goes missing despite the strange meal times both groups have.

Nearby, Equius is tinkering with a mess of wires and metal that might have, at one point, been a... you have no idea, actually. Jake hovers by his shoulder, but you can tell that neither of them are really paying much attention to the task at hand. Jade's duties as head of both weaponry and security have been split between the two in her absence, but you know Equius is waiting more for reassurance that Nepeta is alright than your cousin.

Sollux and Karkat are huddled around the main communication monitor, testing and retesting and _re-_ retesting programs and connections to make sure everything goes smoothly. Their screen is hooked up to a television mounted on one of the far walls so you can see what they're doing, but the diagnostic programs they're running don't make any sense to you. Although Karkat is the head of your communications and technology squad, he has an entire camp to keep track of, so the two of them have an unspoken co-leadership thing that you don't really question. It's hard to deny that Sollux's talents outmatch everyone on the base (with the exception of perhaps Roxy), so his involvement was inevitable from the beginning.

A few nodded greetings are exchanged, and Karkat tells everyone to shut up and sit down as the Pesterchum window finally appears back on the television. Video conferencing is almost impossible with the low-quality, long-distance signal, so you've designated a private memo board for important mass conversations like this one. Now, all you have left to do is wait. And wait. And wait.

Eleven o'clock, your set correspondence time, comes and goes without a word from anyone, and by the time eleven twenty rolls around Equius, Karkat, and Jake have all started pacing. An argument breaks out when your cousin trips over one of the wires and the screen cuts off, and there's a fair bit of scrambling before Sollux has everything up and working once again. Finally, half an hour later, nine discordant pings sound as everyone’s handheld devices receive the same message.

gardenGnostic [GG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board iimportant 2hiit 

GG: hey guys!!!

GG: sorry for taking so long!!

GG: some stuff came up but were alright so you dont have to worry!!!! :)

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

EB: jade! we were all getting nervous.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CG: HOW EXACTLY ARE WE DEFINING ALRIGHT HERE, THOUGH?

CG: WE REALLY NEED TO SET RULES FOR THAT KIND OF STUFF, BECAUSE WE'VE ALL LEARNED FROM PRIOR SHITSTORMS THAT FINE IS A PRETTY RELATIVE TERM.

arsenicCatnip [AC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

AC: :33 < *ac tacklepounces cg*

AC: :33 < karcat!!!!

GG: we didnt lose anyone if thats what youre asking!!

CG: NEPETA, THANK GOD.

centaursTesticle [CT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CT: D —> Yes, it is very good to hear from you, finally

GG: and there arent any really serious injuries or anything just a few scrapes but nothing super serious

AC: :33 < hi equius!!!!!!

golgothasTerror [GT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

GT: By gum jade its good to hear from you!

GT: Itll be nice to have you back home again soon.

GG: jake!!!! how have you been??

EB: okay, i hate to be a big downer, but we are kind of all here for a reason.

EB: i mean, it's really great to hear from you guys, but we started late so we can't take too long.

EB: you guys can need to be able to get at least some sleep in before you start travelling again tomorrow.

EB: and i do want to know what happened. it’s not like you to check in late.

GG: sorry!!! youre right :(

GG: first off can we do a roll call or something so we know whos here???

CG: AND REMEMBER TO KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED, YOU MORONS. WE DON'T WANT TO END UP WITH FIVE SEPARATE CONVERSATIONS HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME. IF YOU NEED TO, OPEN A PRIVATE FUCKING WINDOW, BUT ONLY IF YOU CAN'T AVOID IT.

AC: :33 < *ac wiggles her eyebrows as cg*

CG: NO.

GT: Oh my.

EB: can we please stay on track?

EB: alright, we'll go around the table on this end and then anyone who's still lurking over there can sign in, too.

EB: clearly, i'm here.

CG: I’VE ALREADY REPLIED, TOO.

twinArmageddons [TA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TA: 2up.

CT: D —> I have also responded, but i believe i am next in line regardless

GT: Likewise!

cuttlefishCuller [CC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CC: )(I -EVERYONE!

tentacleTherapist [TT] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TT: Good evening.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

GG: Hello!

EB: alright, i think that's everyone from over here.

GG: hi guys!!!

GG: its just me and nepeta tonight but rufioh said to tell tavros he said hi.

GG: and i guess that extends to equius too.

CT: D —> Tell the f00l my cousin will be pleased to hear that he has not died, as well

EB: and i'll pass the message on to tavros when i see him later.

GG: you got it!!! heehee :)

CG: OKAY, SO AS MUCH AS I HATE TO SIDE WITH ANYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF HIS MORONIC WINDPIPE, I HAVE TO AGREE WITH JOHN ON THIS. WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?

EB: rude.

GG: it wasnt a super big deal really!!! our equipment just kind of went weird for a few hours

AC: :33 < *ac nods and furrows her brows*

AC: :33 < yeah it was really furreaky!! the hub didnt stop working but none of our phones could get the internet signal

GG: it was like something was blocking it so we ended up travelling blind for a while.

GG: although not really blind because we had our compass and a few maps and stuff just in case!!!!

TA: ii wiill take a look at iit when you get back. there could be 2omethiing out where you guy2 are that2 iinterferiing, two.

TA: iim going two have two figure out where you guy2 have 2topped for the niight 2o ii can add your locatiion two the map anyway, 2o ju2t hang on.

Sollux wheels his chair over to another computer set up near the back of the room, a set of two monitors sidled up next to each other with a navigation program stretched across both screens. The map is covered in colored dots, each designated by some key every member of the communications team knows as either a destination, recorded point, or important landmark. The whole system keeps everyone on the same page, making it easier for the communications team to guide various squads as they move, and it gives rescue units points to follow if something goes wrong.

A few keyboard clicks later, the Pesterchum window on the television disappears, and is replaced with a satellite view of Oregon as Sollux traces the internet signal through which your cousin and Nepeta are broadcasting. After a moment, it centers on the spot Jade's party has apparently set up camp for the night, and you frown. It's a little farther away than you had expected it to be. They're not making the best time, but it could be worse. When Sollux finishes, the network speeds up again, and you're free to resume your conversation without battling a hundred years worth of message lag.

EB: ugh, well, there isn’t much we can do about it from here except hope it doesn’t happen again.

EB: try to get back as soon as possible just in case, though.

EB: for now, let’s at least finish what we signed on for the first place. you know the drill.

EB: and seriously, let's try to stay on track for once.

Nepeta, head of the scouting division and working leader for the squad currently deployed, gives a rundown of where the team hit and what they managed to collect, and Jane and Rose take over on your end as they take notes and ask questions. Later, you know they'll go over what you've learned in greater detail, and use the information to plan out how long the supplies will last so that another raid mission can be organized. Jade fills Equius and Jake in on what resources she's managed to find and how much ammunition they gained and lost, for which Jake trades information about how the security rounds have been going in her absence.

Halfway through a heated debate between the three of them about a change in the weapons training regimen, though, everything comes to a screeching halt. The room, relatively silent as you all communicate solely over text, is broken almost completely in half when Karkat lets out an unexpected, half-yelled, "Oh, _fuck,_ " and almost all of you drop your phones in surprise. There's a beat as everyone freezes, but Karkat doesn't take the cue to explain himself. Instead, he starts scrolling frantically through something on his computer screen. "Sollux, do something productive with your useless ass for once and trace this shit."

There's something in his tone that has you all tense as the boy in question shoves Karkat out of his seat to get his hands on the keyboard, and soon the map is back onscreen. After a moment shifting and calculating and frantic typing, though, it settles on a new position halfway into Colorado—and now you're _really_ confused. You've never sent scouting teams that far south—the trek on foot is too long and there's no way to guarantee a steady fuel supply though that much open land. Only once have you ever gotten a signal from anywhere near there, and it was from a team who'd gotten themselves turned around running from an ambush they didn’t survive. There's no reason for anyone to be left out there now.

Green questions line up on your Pesterchum screen and you look around to see that everyone else has stopped replying to the memo, too.

EB: hang on, guys.

"Karkat, what the hell is going on?"

He blinks, and turns his monitor around as Sollux sits back so you can see what he has displayed on his screen. It's a Pesterchum window, and, for a moment, you're confused. The wall of red text looks familiar and you're about to ask what the big deal is, why is his brother awake so late, but then you notice that no, actually—it's not Kankri. The chumhandle is different, the typing style is off, and—

"The alert system just picked up some fucking straggler way out in the middle of nowhere, and he's _alive_."

* * *

**== > BE THE STRAGGLER WAY OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE**

Holy shit, it's cold. Not quite freezing, but still really fucking chilly. Why did you sign up for this? Oh, right—you didn't. You didn't sign up for this, because you're the one who wrote down and passed out the god damn signup sheet in the first place. This was your idea, and _wow_ you're really beginning to regret it. Actually, that's a lie—you _don't_ regret it, because this was the only option you had left, but you really kind of wish you had thought things through a little bit more.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD. For the past seventeen days, you've been heading north on foot with the hopeless entourage you still haven’t been able to come up with an acceptably-cool name for. Actually, your younger brother DIRK isn’t impossible to deal with, but the psychotic graphic design student, her blind roommate—yeah, the one currently riding on your back—and the skinny drug dealer who probably never finished high school aren’t the most reliable crew to hang with. Now, though, you don’t have much of a choice about who you’re travelling with. They’re the only people you’ve had the _pleasure_ of seeing for the past, what, half-decade? It’s not like you could have left the three-man snark parade behind to die while you took your brother and fled. Well, you could have, but you probably would have felt bad about it. Maybe.

After spending too long trapped inside the borders of your expansive, war-zone of a city, it had slowly become clear that you had run out of places to hide from the things that lurked through the streets at night. You had been okay at first—they scavenged apartment buildings for the corpses of your dead neighbors for food—but, by now most of the bodies were either gone or inedible. The five of you had become the prime target for almost every grey thing left in Houston, and nowhere was safe. No matter how many times you relocated, what you did to cover your tracks, or how many you managed to kill, they always found you. There were always more.

So you'd decided to pack up your shit and get the hell out of dodge.

You weren't naive enough to think that you could escape _them_ altogether, but your plan had been fairly straightforward: get out. Find someplace isolated, set up a perimeter, and hunker down to ride out the rest of your miserable existence together. A farm residence had been your ideal target, and after a bit of coaxing you'd actually gotten everyone to gather their sparse belongings and move with you.

Unfortunately, though, you hadn't exactly thought much farther ahead than the initial escape. Now, you have no idea if the direction you've been heading is the right one—if it will get you where you need to go—but you swear you’ll kill yourself on one of these deadly-looking branches you’ve been beating back for the past seventy-two hours before you admit defeat and turn over your position as group leader to Vriska. That’s the deal you two set up—how you got her to agree to this whole thing. If you fuck up, she finally gets to be in charge, voted position be damned.

"Hey, my cherry brother, I'm thinkin' we ought to get our motherfuckin' rest on sometime soon. I don't know how much more trekkin' my toes can take, and the motherfuckin' sun set, like, a couple hundred hours ago."

You resist the urge to growl, and decided instead to just pretend you can’t hear the slow, drawling whine from what you think is the back of your little party. You don't bother looking behind you to check, though—not that you can with Terezi on your back—because, even though you _know_ he's right, you're too angry with the way things have been going so far to actually make the decision. You know it's dangerous to be out so late, but you want to spend this night under a roof instead of curled up, frozen under whatever thin blankets you’ve been able to carry this far. Vriska snickers, and you can practically hear her counting down the minutes 'til you crack. And she can keep on counting, for all you care. You’re too fucking collected to fold under the pressure.

"For once, Bro, I'm going to side with the juggalo. It's almost midnight."

"You getting tired, li'l man?” You can’t help but bite, but he doesn't take the bait—a fact that both annoys and makes you kind of grateful.

"No, but I'm pretty sure Terezi is asleep."

Huh?

You stomp your next few steps to jostle the redheaded load on your back, and, sure enough, a muffled, "What the hell do you think you're doing, coolkid?" slurs in your ear. Her voice is thick and slow, and—yep—she'd somehow managed to doze off in-transit.

"I've gotta say, TZ—that's a low blow, taking advantage of me like that. As cuddly as my hot bod is, I'm not your fucking pillow." The comment earns you a half-hearted smack on the arm, but you sigh again and slow to a stop, anyway.

"You volunteered to carry me 'cause I was slowing everyone down. You're comfortable, it's late, and no one was saying anything," she whines into your shirt, and you wonder if she's going to stay there all night before Vriska creeps up behind you both and jabs her hard in the side. The action makes Terezi yelp in your ear, and—nope—you totally don't almost drop her. Not you.

"One more day, Strider," the grinning scorpion bitch hisses at your side, and _wow_ , she is _not_ helping your mood right now.

Half an hour later, you've got a circle in the underbrush cleared out and your blankets spread for the night. A fire for warmth is out of the question, because it would attract unnecessary attention—the kind of attention you're trying to _avoid_ —so you're forced to huddle as close to one another as you dare. Gamzee takes the opportunity to light up his freaky _product_ one last time before bed, ignoring everyone’s half-hearted grumbles about it. You're not looking forward to lugging the scent of weed on your clothes for the next possibly _forever,_ so you decide to banish him to the other side of your group by Vriska when he finishes. While the rest of you settle in, he wanders around aimlessly, and after a moment you lose sight joint’s glow in the trees. But you don't particularly care—he can take care of himself.

He reappears fifteen minutes later carrying something in his hands, drugs gone, but only when Dirk asks what the hell he he’s got do you actually start paying attention.

It’s some kind of miracle box, he says—something he found strapped behind a poor limb-less brother’s motherfuckin' ribcage, and, after a beat of silence, it occurs to you that holy shit he had found a _body_. He’s too fucked in the head to sound particularly bothered by the fact that he’d just stuck his hands in a corpse, and wow you really didn’t think this guy could creep you out any more.

Then, of course, your brain reminds you that where there are bodies, there are bound to be the things that _eat_ bodies. You start to say as much, but he cuts you off, slow and steady like he always is while buzzed.

"No worries, my cherry brother—his meat's all up in fleshy heaven, so ain't no predators gonna come predatorin' around here. Looks to me like they already made their buffet rounds on Mr. Skinny and his friends way back before leavin' Houston was even a thought in your pretty little head."

You tell him to fuck off, give yourself two seconds to relax again, and then refocus on why the hell he thought raiding a pile of half-eaten, bone-picked human parts was a good idea. Dirks points out that all the reasoning you need was rolled up between his fingers before he left, and demands to see the “miracle box”.

It’s cracked, dirt-covered plastic and easily half the length of your forearm, and you can see the frayed remains where there might have once been a strap or something looped through two metal hooks. When Dirk—the only one who actually willing to touch it—cracks open the case, he tells you to fish out your phone so he can have some light. You've learned to trust him and his skills—not that you'd tell the little shit that; it'd just inflate his ego—so you pull it out and power it up without much more than a few whiny grumbles about missing your beauty sleep because of this bullshit.

For as long as you can remember, your little brother has had a way with wires and screwdrivers. From pulling apart computers and toys, to "improving" your household appliances, he's always been able to do things you couldn't even dream of. When the world ended and you found yourselves trapped in your apartment for a full four months before you dared venture out, he'd taken it upon himself to pull apart the building's generator and get it working again, just so he could charge his phone enough to play Angry Birds. His skills had only improved over time.

He messes with the piece of crap as you and Vriska watch on, Gamzee having collapsed next to a dozing Terezi. Neither you nor the bitch are going to go to sleep until the other does, you know. You've been playing out the same passive-aggressive set of old-school competitions since you met and she nearly tried to kill you, so you doubt anything’s going to change that. Not now, not ever.

Suddenly, a shrill, high-pitched noise breaks the silence and—

A full minute passes before you realize it's your phone _beeping_ , and _wow_ it's been a hundred fucking years since you last heard that particular sound. Immediately, you snatch it back from your brother and—

holy shit, someone really _is_ messaging you.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] 24083 HOURS AGO opened public bulletin board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE

carcinoGeneticist [CG] 24083 HOURS AGO opened memo on board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE

CG: I'M NOT GOING TO PREMISE THIS SHITTY WARNING SYSTEM WITH SOME KIND OF HORROR MOVIE COUNTDOWN, BECAUSE YOU CAN ALREADY SEE WHEN I POSTED THIS IN THE TIMESTAMP. I'M GOING TO MAKE THE ASSUMPTION THAT YOUR BRAIN IS DEVELOPED ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND BASIC MATH, SO WASTE YOUR OWN TIME ON SOME THIRD GRADE DIVISION AND FIGURE IT OUT FOR YOUR OWN GOD DAMN SELF.

CG: JUST SO YOU DON'T FREAK OUT OR SOME SHIT, THOUGH, WE'RE GOING TO RIP THIS WHOLE LONG-WINDED EXPLANATION OFF LIKE A FUCKING BAND-AID AND SKIP ALL THE USELESS CRAP LIKE PROPER INTRODUCTIONS AND WHATEVER.

CG: THE POINT IS THAT IF YOU'RE READING THIS YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY STILL ALIVE. CONGRATULATIONS.

CG: UNFORTUNATELY, I HAVE IT UNDER GOOD AUTHORITY THAT YOU MIGHT NOT BE FOR MUCH LONGER IF YOU STAY WHERE YOU ARE NOW.

CG: THAT GOOD AUTHORITY IS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, BY THE WAY. I KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I'M TALKING ABOUT.

CG: ANYWAY, IF YOU'VE MANAGED TO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND SURVIVE THIS LONG, HUZZAH, YOU'VE WON THE FUCKING UNIVERSE. FIRST PRIZE IS AN ALL EXPENSE PAID LIFE WITH, YOU KNOW, OTHER PEOPLE WHO WERE SMART ENOUGH TO NOT DIE, TOO.

CG: YEAH, YOU READ THAT RIGHT. THERE ARE MORE OF US OUT HERE.

CG: WE MANAGED TO RIG THE PESTERCHUM SERVERS SO THAT ANYONE WITH AN ACTIVE DEVICE AND A PESTERCHUM CACHE ON SAID PIECE OF SHIT WILL AUTOMATICALLY SUBSCRIBE TO ALERTS ON THIS MEMO BOARD, WHICH IS WHY YOU'RE GETTING THIS NOW. YOU'VE WANDERED INTO AN AREA WITH THE ACTIVE WI-FI WE SET UP, AND NOW WE CAN FIND YOU.

CG: FUCK, THAT SOUNDED CREEPY.

CG: JUST TO BE CLEAR, YOU CAN FIND US, TOO. THAT'S KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS GOD DAMN THING.

CG: WE'VE GOT SHELTER, SECURITY, FOOD, MEDICAL CARE, AND ACTUAL REAL PEOPLE IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN LIVING OUT THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE LIFE ON THIS SHITSTORM CRATER OF A PLANET IN RELATIVE NORMALCY.

CG: CLICK THE RANDOM PESTER BUTTON AND YOU'LL BE REDIRECTED TO EITHER ME OR ONE OF MY DOUCHEBAG TEAM MEMBERS. FROM THERE, WE'LL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO WITH YOURSELF.

CG: THIS ISN'T A FUCKING JOKE, SO GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK CRANIAL BONE.

CG: SHIT STOPPED BEING FUNNY WHEN THE WORLD FUCKING ENDED.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] 24083 HOURS AGO closed memo on board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE 

ectoBiologist [EB] 15330 HOURS AGO opened memo on board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE 

EB: hi, whoever is reading this!

EB: just wanted to add a few things to this old message. it's going to stay up pretty much forever, but i figured it would make sense to keep it updated.

EB: the offer still stands! just hit random pestered and you'll be rerouted to one of us, and from there we'll get you to where you need to be.

EB: if you think you can't make it on your own, just contact us anyway. we can send someone to get you.

EB: the point of this message was to add that we've relocated since karkat's first created this thing, though! which is really great because our new base is actually really sweet.

EB: that's the angry grey guy's name, by the way. karkat! and i'm john.

EB: anyway, yeah. i hope there are people still out there to read this! you're always welcome. :)

ectoBiologist [EB] 15330 HOURS AGO closed memo on board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE 

twinArmageddons [TA] 8147 HOURS AGO closed public bulletin board READ THIS AND STAY ALIVE 

"It’s a wireless router,” Dirk says, and you totally _don't_ jump a second time because you totally _were_ paying attention enough to realize he’d been reading over your shoulder. "Whoever had this with them was using it to keep up a mobile internet connection. Try messaging them back, Bro. It's not like we’ve got anything to lose. Even if they can’t help us, we might as well tell them that their friends are dead."

Vriska nods, and you actually consider not doing it just to spite her. But curiosity and—fuck, yeah, you admit it—a little bit of hope win out, and you start typing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to post this a little early because I was really excited about it, and I just _couldn't wait_ to get you guys as pumped about part II as me. Things are finally getting good!! And, of course, we've now been introduced to some of our main players. (And I know how much you've all been waiting for the JohnDaves, because I know I have! ) Also, Just to clear a few things up, I thought I'd make a list of who currently is a member of Karkat's camp (i.e. Cured) and who's a member of John's camp (i.e. still human). 
> 
> Karkat's Camp: Karkat, Nepeta, Feferi, Sollux, Eridan (will be introduced next chapter), Rufioh (will be explained in the future)  
> John's Camp: John, Jane, Jade, Jake, Rose, Roxy, Kankri, Tavros, Equius, Horuss (will be explained), Meenah (will be introduced next chapter), Cronus (will be introduced next chapter)
> 
> A special thanks also goes out to my amazing beta, jackfrostitution on tumblr! She's been an huge help both as an editor and as a sounding board for my plot freak outs. And thank you guys so much for reading this! It's been so much fun to write, and I look forward to showing y'all what I have planned for the coming weeks! If you have any questions, comments, concerns, need something clarified, or just want to say hi, hit me up on tumblr at spoopyegberts for the month of October. <3
> 
> Theme song for this chapter is [_Ghost Towns_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MUA9hoDa40) by Radical Face.


	7. One By One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally get to see blue and red Pesterlogs.

**[4/13/37]**

— turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 00:43 —

TG: sup

TG: hey

TG: so i dont actually know if this shits going to work but i figured i might as well try

TG: is anyone there

TG: no

TG: thats cool

TG: fucking ice cold

TG: frozen

TG: like my ass

TG: jesus dicks why the hell is colorado even this cold

TG: its april for christs sake

TG: flowers should be blooming

TG: small children should be shedding their winter coats like tiny pink caterpillar monkeys breaking out of their weird fluffy cocoons

TG: seriously though id really appreciate it if you responded or something

TG: but no take your time

TG: no worries

TG: holy shit i hope youre not dead

TG: thatd suck for both of us

TG: i mean for you because youd be you know dead but for me too because id be spamming a corpses inbox

TG: thatd be hella awkward let me tell you

TG: okay yeah im pretty sure youre dead

TG: fuck this im out

CG: WAIT, YOU ARROGANT ASSHOLE.

CG: JUST WAIT ONE FUCKING SECOND.

TG: holy shit youre real

TG: no need for a blue fairy all up in here

TG: youre a real boy

TG: girl

TG: idk man karkats a fucking weird name but i dont judge

TG: im assuming youre karkat at least

TG: thats what the blue kid said in his memo

TG: hello

TG: wow youre rude as hell and then you just leave me hanging a second time

TG: i could be sleeping you know

TG: im wasting my valuable time here waiting for you

TG: dude its been like fifteen minutes what the hell

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW invited turntechGodhead [TG] to join private board iimportant 2hiit

TG: oh

— carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 01:14 —

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board iimportant 2shiit 

CG: I'M OPENING A NEW MEMO TO KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED, OKAY GUYS?

CG: NO COMPLAINTS OR I WILL REACH ACROSS THIS FUCKING TABLE AND SLAP YOU SO HARD YOU WILL SPEND THE NEXT WEEK AND A HALF IN THE INFIRMARY.

turntechGodhead [TG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TG: are you always this cheerful or is this a special thing just for me?

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

EB: sorry, he's always like this.

TG: whoa theres more of you

EB: hi, by the way!

EB: oh, yeah. there's a whole bunch of us here right now, actually.

CG: I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF KARMA OR STARS OR WHATEVER COSMIC SHIT YOU SEEM TO HAVE IN YOUR FAVOR, BUT YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE CAUGHT EVERYONE CURRENTLY CAPABLE OF SAVING YOUR "FROZEN ASS" IN ONE PLACE.

TG: who said my ass needed saving

CG: WHY ELSE WOULD YOU BE TALKING TO US?

TG: maybe i just wanted some decent fucking conversation

TG: something that youre clearly not capable of

EB: karkat, shut up.

EB: tg, maybe we could figure out what to do if we knew a little bit more about your situation?

EB: to be honest your messages kind of caught us off guard.

EB: oh, i'm john by the way. although you probably already know that, since you knew karkat's name.

TG: wow thank you for actually being civil mysterious blue john

TG: names dave

As you wait for someone to respond, you take a moment to glance up at the others. Dirk is still reading over your shoulders, and Vriska is leaning over his back to see too. At some point, she started reading the messages out loud to Terezi, who's now wide awake with a dazed Gamzee still sprawled on top of her. You can't tell whether or not he's paying attention, and quite frankly you don't care—you're too busy flipping the fuck out about the fact you're actually talking to someone _new_ for the first time in years.

Not that anyone around you can tell, of course. You’ve got a reputation to uphold.

EB: hi, dave! nice to meet you!

CG: OKAY, WONDERFUL. HAPPY FEELY INTRODUCTIONS ARE OUT OF THE WAY. NOW HOW THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING TO US RIGHT NOW?

"You're not actually going to tell them, are you?" Vriska asks as you start typing, and—yeah—it suddenly occurs to you that _someone in our group was nuts enough to go corpse-diving in the middle of the night and just sort of stumbled across this weird box_ might not make you viable candidates for whatever safe-haven they're advertising.

TG: shenanigans

CG: WOW, THANK YOU. I FEEL SO INFORMED.

twinArmageddons [TA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TA: you would have two have one of our hub2 two get a 2iignal, and we havent lo2t 2o many that ii cant keep track of my own equiipment.

TA: what ii want two know ii2 how you got your hand2 on iit iin the fiir2t place.

EB: guys, you can bitch about your technology later, okay? figuring out how to get him all the way to us takes priority.

EB: the important thing is that he does have a hub, so we can stay in contact.

EB: whoops, sorry, i'm assuming things. that is why you messaged, right?

TG: warm shelter and some real food sound pretty fucking sweet right now im not going to lie

EB: then we'll do our best to get you here safely.

TG: im under the impression this isnt your first time dealing with this shit so im going to hold you to that

You trade information well into the night, admittedly panicking a little when they tell you they're in fucking _Washington state_ , but all-in-all everything goes as smoothly as it can. A few more colored voices pop up and they start up the goddamn Spanish Inquisition, but no real conflict arises until you mention the fact that you'll be carting an addict twelve hundred miles to their base of operations. The blue kid kind of freaks out about that, spewing out a whole list of problems that you hadn't even considered when you'd set out—namely, withdrawal. Yeah, there's no way Gamzee packed enough shit to last him the months you'll be on the road, and that's going to cause a metric fuckton of problems down the line. But from what you've seen, he's got his bags stuffed with whatever he can carry—including crap you didn't even _know_ he was on—so you figure it'll be a little while before you run into any real issue.

By the time they start insisting you get some rest, they've made plans to send an escort party your way as soon as they can spare the resources, and you're feeling pretty fucking sweet about how everything is working out. For once, the future doesn’t look so fucking terrible.

The next morning, you pack your bags and put your brother in charge of the miracle box. Getting everyone in your five-man train wreck of a survival party hooked up to the network takes a better part of the morning, but the whole thing isn't as hard as it could have been. All of you still have your phones on-hand.

Back in Houston, Dirk had patched up a few hotspots throughout the city to keep in everyone in contact over long distances, so the transition from one chat client to another isn't particularly difficult in the grand scheme of things. Karkat and Sollux are the only ones online, and they try to guide you through the process from afar—but any seriousness about the situation just flies out the fucking window when Terezi gets her voice-to-text program up and running again. Hearing Karkat's angry messages read aloud by a computerized British woman is hands-down the funniest shit you've had the privilege to witness in years, and no, no you definitely do _not_ snort like a hog when TZ tells him he sounds pretty.

Not long after, though, he tells you he has to head to bed, and you tease him about it ‘til he turns you over to some chick with bright pink text and signs off without really fighting back. Things get quiet after that, and you do a bit of dramatic brooding as your brother makes nice with the other TG.

* * *

**[5/2/37]**

Over the next few weeks, you establish a kind of routine, guided by two—sometimes three—voices through forests and along roads as you trudge northward. Karkat isn't always there when you wake up in the mornings, but the novelty of talking with someone _new_ doesn't diminish no matter who five of you take the company of.

You're not lucky enough to avoid every pocket of Infected you run across, though. Detours into what had once been towns and neighborhoods in search of food are still as dangerous as ever, but you fight your way through just like you always have. And, yeah—maybe you _are_ a little more optimistic than you had been. Not that it shows, of course. But having a plan is nice, and you even start to steadily rack up a pile of tallied victories against Vriska. She doesn't really have much to complain about these days.

By the time you hear from the guy with blue text again, you've almost forgotten about him. Or, well, no—you haven't actually _forgotten_ him, but he's been pushed to the back of your mind because he never comes up as a topic worth discussing. When you'd asked, Roxy had told you that he and the others rarely kept in contact with Approachers—they were busy keeping everyone else in line—and after that you’d honestly never expected to hear from them again. Especially John. When the reasons Karkat and Sollux keep strange sleeping schedules come to light, you figure a guy who’s that important has better things to do than waste his time talking with a couple of messed-up kids.

Even so, he messages you one morning and you don’t really know what to think, but you figure responding is probably a good place to start.

— ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 09:38 — 

EB: hi, dave!

TG: whoa hey sup

TG: to what do i owe this honor

EB: ew no, stop.

EB: you've been talking to roxy, haven't you?

EB: wait, that's a stupid question. of course you have.

TG: ...

EB: shut up.

EB: anyway, i just wanted to check and see how you guys were holding up.

TG: so far so good

TG: actually no thats a lie

TG: so far so great i mean

TG: atlas x5 combo up in here

TG: lifting up the sky aint nothing going to bring us down

EB: did you just quote a musical at me?

EB: is that what that was?

TG: no

EB: dave based on what i've heard i never would have pegged you for a broadway fan.

TG: no definitely not

EB: shh it's okay this is a judgement free zone.

TG: stop

EB: it's a circle of acceptance.

TG: why

EB: you don't have to hide who you are.

— turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 09:51 — 

EB: wait, i'm sorry! 

— turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 09:51 —

TG: liar

EB: did i catch you at a bad time? you seem pretty grumpy.

TG: im not grumpy

TG: i dont grump

TG: grumping is a thing reserved for forest-dwelling old men

TG: which i am definitely not

EB: despite the fact that you're currently living in the woods?

TG: fun fact youre living in the woods too

TG: if were making it rain dwarf names youd be dopey

EB: ouch, that one cut me deep.

TG: thats what you get dumbass

TG: the ironic beauty of idina menzels voice isnt something you should take lightly man

EB: except it's actually genuinely pretty?

EB: if you're talking about who i think you're talking about, anyway.

EB: but how is that ironic?

TG: sorry bro guess youre just not high enough on the level to understand it

EB: level?

TG: only those with the blood of the gods flowing through their veins have reached the farthest tiers of ironic comprehension

TG: youve failed the test

TG: we can no longer accept you through the gates of valhalla

EB: i'm pretty sure you just don't know what ironic actually means

TG: rude

TG: i should slap you for insulting my religion

TG: feel the sting of my scorned womanly glove

EB: ah yes, i forgot that word games were an intrinsic part of norse spiritual practices.

EB: forgive me, oh wise one.

TG: apology not accepted buttface

EB: actual five year old dave.

EB: oh, shit. wait. i'm so sorry. what's your last name?

TG: fanfuckingtastic

EB: i'm pretty sure that's not actually it.

TG: shit you caught me

TG: my full name is actually dave mchellarad

EB: access denied

TG: ridonkulamazing

TG: its scandinavian

TG: first my religion now my culture

TG: youre burning me down like a californian forest fire here dude

TG: the sickest of burns

TG: millions of poor helpless woodland creatures are smoldering to a blackened crisp on your watch

TG: oh look a cute bunny

TG: whoops there it goes looks like its dead now

TG: oh hey a baby deer

TG: dead

TG: yo you there

TG: wow what is it with you guys always ditching me

TG: rude

EB: your brother said your name is strider.

TG: thats cheating

TG: that totally counts as cheating

TG: im sorry john youve been disqualified from the game of life

EB: dave strider, i'm sorry but you need administrative access to kick me off the team.

EB: which is a thing you don't have, by the way.

TG: fuck you

EB: god dave, i'm not that kind of girl. take me out to dinner first.

TG: can't take you out to dinner if i dont know your name too then

TG: fairs fair now fork it over

EB: john egbert.

TG: egbert

EB: yes, egbert.

TG: egburp

TG: egdirt

TG: egderp

EB: oh my god.

TG: egsquirt

TG: egtwerp

TG: j eggy

TG: eggs johnadict

TG: okay even ill admit that one was a stretch

EB: is this payback?

TG: take it or leave it breakfast boy

TG: youve released the strider now face the consequences

TG: im at least twelve times deadlier than the kraken i can assure you

EB: one glimpse at how much of a loser you are and your victims drop dead.

EB: like a dweebish medusa.

TG: i was thinking more along the lines of like the white witch

TG: hella rich and ruler of an alternate dimension

EB: same powers though?

TG: one glimpse of how fucking awesome i am and my victims drop dead

EB: denial is a dangerous thing, dave.

TG: yeah those currents man so fast theyll pull you under if youre not careful

EB: just for that joke i hope you drown.

TG: ouch

TG: that was uncalled for

TG: im physically wounded here

TG: bleeding out on the street

TG: dude dont tell me youre talking to my bro again

TG: dude

EB: ugh you're such a drama queen, dave.

EB: i have to go, though. sorry.

TG: oh no worries man you do your thing

EB: cool! we'll talk later then.

EB: i actually did have some questions i wanted to ask you, but you distracted me with your stupidity.

EB: see ya! 

— ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 10:46 —

TG: later egbuns

— turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 10:46 — 

When you finally close your phone, you can feel Dirk's eyes on you, so you raise an eyebrow at him. He just shrugs, and you actually do start to wonder what he and John talked about. Later that night you steal his phone to check, but you get so caught up in reading the Pesterlogs between he and Roxy that you forget about the whole thing and just laugh and laugh and laugh at your brother's expense. The poor kid doesn’t know how to deal with girls, and _fuck_ that’s some comedy gold right there. Socially awkward Dirk Strider? Who would have thought?

* * *

**[5/9/37]**

John isn't online for a few days, but when you finally do see the icon on your chumroll change from grey to yellow you don't message him first—you wait for him to talk to you, instead. You still aren't really sure what to think of him, because, quite honestly, your information on the guy is pretty lacking. Sollux isn’t much help, either. All you manage to pull out of him are a few facts that may or may not be total bullshit, and they don’t really make you any less intimidated by he who bares one of the most fucking ridiculous names you’ve ever heard.

Not that you _are_ intimidated by him.

Pfft. He's just some guy. (Who might actually be able to bring people back from the dead. And who could quite possibly be the leader of a really, really small country.)

No big deal.

At least he put up with your snark the last time you talked. But how much of that was sarcasm? Was he really poking back at you, or were you reading too much into it? For one thing, he doesn't type like a professional, which is sort-of-kind-of mildly comforting.

Now, you’ve got both hands shoved in your pockets, and you’re walking ahead of everyone else as the five of you slink northward along the side of a highway. Colorado seems to be going on forever, but you can’t decide if that’s because your pace has slowed or because it’s too goddamn _cold_ to be the middle of May. Probably a little bit of both, you think.

To get your mind off the same looping topic you’ve been fretting over for the past hour, you decide to stoop as low as you possibly can and strike up an argument with Vriska—but then your phone vibrates, and _oh shit_ he's messaging you.

— ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 15:12 — 

EB: hey, dave.

EB: sorry it took me so long to get back to you! things have been kind of hectic around here.

TG: shit man no big deal

TG: i know youre busy doing stuff that needs to get done

EB: haha, yeah, sure.

There's a pause, and you just sort of stare at the screen as you walk, not really paying much attention to anything around you as you wait for him to start typing again. That couldn't have been it, right? Wait, fuck—you haven't done this socialization thing in a while. Should you say something? Should you wait for him to respond?

Ugh, when did talking to people get so hard?

(Oh, right—when you decided to spend half a decade trapped in a city with only a handful of freaks to keep you busy.)

TG: so when you signed off you said you had some other shit you wanted to talk about

TG: and i dont know whether you meant like speed dating twenty questions stuff or whatever

TG: but its not like i have anything else to actually do and i figure thats why you messaged me so yeah

TG: fire away i guess

TG: unleash the bombardment

TG: make it rain

TG: punctuated missiles up in here

TG: no fear

TG: im all ears

TG: times ticking away so heres the all clear

EB: are you rhyming on purpose?

TG: thats just one stanza of this fucking sweet lyrical i can feel coming on

TG: youve inspired me

EB: wow, i think i'm flattered?

TG: damn straight you should be

TG: seriously though dude say what you got to say

The conversation after that is stilted and awkward, and as the minutes tick by John's messages become more and more clinical. He asks about the supplies you packed before leaving, how long you think they'll last, and how much rest you're getting each night. He quizzes you about Gamzee and Terezi and then Gamzee again; about allergies and pre-existing conditions and when the last time anyone scraped his or her knee was. You pick up pretty quickly that there's something off about the way he's talking to you, but you can't decide whether your previous conversation had just been him humoring you and this is his _normal_ way of speaking—or if something is genuinely wrong.

When he finally signs off, you decide to turn the tables and grill whoever else is online. Unfortunately, you haven't actually talked to anyone but the three voices guiding you to Washington—and John—since that first night, so you can only get up the nerve to click Roxy's name and not any of the other colors lighting up your screen.

—turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] at 17:31 — 

TG: sup lalonde

TG: yo

TG: you there

TG: wait scratch that i know youre there because i can see you talking to my bro

TG: are you ignoring me

TG: why waste your time with one strider when you can have both

TG: two hot males begging for your attention isnt that every preteen girls wet dream or something

TG: do preteen girls even have wet dreams

TG: wait fuck how do i erase messages

TG: abort abort abort

TG: dave you sound like a pedophile 

TG: are u a pedophil edave? 

TG: should i stop talking to u? 

TG: no on both accounts

TG: why is dirk looking at me like that

TG: roxy what did you tell him

TG: roxy

TG: fuck

TG: calm ur man tits davey i just asked him if you had a penchant for lil ladies back in texas 

TG: he said you watched gay porn so i figure my vitus is safe 

TG: virtue*

TG: there is no way i can salvage this conversation is there

TG: probably not 

TG: its ur own fault tho 

TG: why did you even wantt oo message me in the first place?? 

TG: i was gonna ask you if there was anything super big important drastic going on with you guys but yeah no i should probably go

TG: dont bea baby dave 

TG: what would make u think there was? 

TG: idk just wondering

TG: shit cant i just be concerned for the wellbeing of my bro

TG: bros

TG: which includes you by the way because youre an honorary bro

TG: gender nondescriminate term right there

TG: was that a typo or a freudian slip 

TG:what

TG: the singular bro thing 

TG: typo

TG: wait how do you know what a freudian slip is youre like twelve

TG: oh ok 

TG: also im 14 

TG: also also i grew up around college professors dont doubt how muhc i know bout stuff 

TG: are you threatening me lalonde

TG: maybe yes maybe no ill just have to keep u in suspense 

TG: but anyway i mean nothing really noteworthy i guess??? 

TG: the last scouting team kk sent out came back a couple of days ago 

TG: there was some stuff that happened or somethin and idk the medics are stressed but its nothing they havent handled before so 

TG: yeah 

TG: oh

TG: is everyone alright

TG: wait thats a stupid question if johns involved whoever it is is probably fine

TG: dude can work miracles right

TG: not clown miracles but like real crazy shit

TG: yeah i dont think its anything really bad jsut a lot of overreactin 

TG: they ran into a cell of sleeping stis during the day and some shit went down 

TG: only like 1 person got really hurt but hell be fine 

TG: johns kinda stressed tho 

TG: have yuo been talking 2 him? cause kk told me and sollux not to say anything about it 

TG: yeah not really just like once or twice

TG: im assuming stis isnt a good thing

TG: also im gonna ignore the clown thing bc i dont really wannna know 

TG: oh stage two infected or somethin idk john and kk call it that 

TG: oh yeah got it

TG: i was just wondering

TG: dont worry davey everythin is a ok here 

TG: im glad johns talkin to u though 

TG: whats that supposed to mean

TG: are you asking me 2 gossip about my bffs ssexy brother 

TG: no

TG: you brought it up though

TG: i didnt know he had a sister

TG: or brother or whatever

TG: i dont know much about most of you guys actually

TG: well do you wanna know?? 

TG: i mean were going to b livin together soon so u might as well get acquainted with us 

TG: idk it makes sense to me 

For the rest of the afternoon, you and Roxy trade stories, and she tells you about everyone on base that she can think of—including people you don't even know. You're honestly surprised to learn that John is your age, but are even more thrilled when she tells you that he has a sister just a year older than your brother and a cousin Dirk's age. It's been too fucking long since your bro had someone relatable to talk to, so you make her promise to get the three of them in contact.

By the time she trades shifts with Sollux, your worries about the guy who types in blue have been squashed, and you feel like you've got a better picture of where you're leading your weird little entourage. Yeah, everyone there sounds kind of nuts, but you figure they can't be too bad. They're willing to take you in, after all.

* * *

**[5/21/37]**

When the five of you reach the Colorado-Wyoming border, you're half-frozen and exhausted with too many miles left to travel. In the month and a half since leaving Houston, you've been rained on six times, worn through three pairs of shoes, and slept in a real bed a grand total of four hours. And, the farther north you travel, the more frequently you run across pockets of the grey things that lurk in the woods and the deserted towns you pass through. You do eventually hear from John again, and he seems more than willing to sass back at you with just as much snark as you can dish out, much to your ( _totally_ nonexistent) relief. First few awkward conversations aside, the two of you start talking more and more until you're spending entire afternoons chattering and joking about nothing in particular. He starts staying up late with you on the nights you have watch, too—and he tells you about the stars while you describe the script you’d been writing before everything went to hell. He doesn't like to sleep, you discover, and that works just fine for you because you can't afford to relax much, anyway.

"Bro, we're going to have to stop soon. Shake mechanism aside, this thing needs batteries to keep functioning at the rate we've been using it, and we're almost out again," Dirk calls as you break through the trees, and you nod, orange hair falling in your face. He doesn't look up at you, though, so you make a sort of affirmative grunt in his general direction as you set down the wood you've gathered.

The five of you have stopped for the night, and even though you know it's risky you can't afford to spend another night without a fire to keep you warm. At this point, you're more likely to freeze in your sleep than die at the hands of whatever is drawn to your campsite, so you've decided to take the risk. Gamzee and Terezi are off to one side, setting out a tarp to keep your blankets dry against the damp, chilly ground, and Vriska follows you out of the forest just as you start laying down your twigs. She's on fire-and-food duty tonight, because you have the first lookout shift. Your brother is curled around the wireless hub in his lap, flashlight and screwdriver in hand, messing with something inside.

"Yeah, okay. We're a day and a half out from the nearest town, so we'll make a stop then. Harley and the others are supposed to meet us when we hit the next border, though—this'll probably be our last break. Anything else we're missing?" You say after a moment.

"A roof over our heads. Warm beds. Real food," Vriska mutters from behind you, and you sigh, rubbing the bridge of your nose and ignoring her.

Your brother shakes his head. "Nah, we're good."

Dinner and the rest of your evening chores pass in relative silence. Everyone is tired—so, so goddamn tired—and it’s been a while since anyone had the energy to put up a good argument. Without that, you don't have anything else to do, so most of your focus has been shifted to your Pesterchum accounts. You’ve all managed to find a few new friends, whether you’ll admit it or not.

By the time everyone else settles in for the night, you're worn out and bored and cold and still really fucking hungry. (Maybe you should up your food rations and add that to the list of things you'll need to find in a few days?) You consider the idea for a moment, before you decide it’s actually probably a horrible idea. You've learned not to spend more time in towns and cities than you have to. After going from the daily chaos of Houston to the relative peace the wilderness usually offers, you're not itching to throw yourself back into hardcore combat. It's been a few days since you ran into the last group of Infected, and you know with the luck you clearly don’t have you're due to meet another soon. It’s cosmic payback for something you can’t even remember doing, you’re sure.

Sollux is still online, so you tell him about your plan and he gives you a rundown of all he knows about the area. Your group is walking a path only one past scouting team ever managed to find, so his information is admittedly sparse. You'll have to be on your guard—but, then again, when are you ever not?

John's chumhandle, marked idle for most of the day, suddenly highlights onscreen, and you'll never admit to another living soul how that makes you want to fist-pump at the sky. _Ironically_.

Yeah, Sollux is pretty great, but you've found that you actually really _enjoy_ talking to John. He's an interesting guy—the kind of person you never saw yourself really getting along with—and you aren't sure why he's taken such a liking to you. But that's okay. Overanalyzing the whole thing won't get you anywhere, so you just sort of shrug internally and tap his name on your screen.

— turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 22:56 — 

TG: sup john

EB: hey, dave!

EB: you're on watch tonight?

TG: yeah man

TG: nothings gonna get past me

TG: im on the prowl

TG: protecting my little sheep from harm

TG: this is an anti wolf zone

TG: no predators allowed at this lunch table

EB: that's a new one. have you been thinking about that all day?

TG: genius cant be planned bro

EB: suuuuuuuure.

TG: holy shit

TG: have you been talking to serket again

TG: come on man you know shes bad news

EB: dave, you've been living with her for the last hundred years. i highly doubt she's as bad as you make her out to be.

EB: she hasn’t killed you yet, after all.

TG: no way man the reason i know what im talking about is because ive had to deal with her for so long

TG: trust me on this

EB: i do trust you! but i also think you're kind of overreacting.

EB: i know you two don't like each other, so you're biased!

EB: ancient feuds and all that.

TG: are you shitting me im way past the whole power struggle thing

TG: we settled that back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth

TG: but im talking about other stuff okay

TG: stuff i know that shes not going to tell you

EB: dave, we're not having this conversation.

EB: you don't get to tell me who i can and can't be friends with. end of story. can we please move on?

TG: alright fine whatever man

TG: just dont come crying to me when she idk literally stabs you in the back or something

TG: what do you want to talk about

EB: anything! anything that's not this!

EB: how was your day?

TG: uneventful as usual

TG: tree tree tree tree rock rock tree rock big tree

TG: there isnt much to see out here lets be real

TG: i did find a dead frog through

TG: that was pretty cool

TG: it was whole and everything like it just keeled over and died or something

TG: dont see that shit everyday do you

TG: no i dont think so

EB: you are actually a ten year old, i've decided.

EB: a ten year old boy who likes swords and dead stuff.

TG: oh yeah well how was your day then if youre just going to mock my great discovery

EB: boring.

TG: i call fuckery

TG: can you hear it

TG: im sending my voice on the wind like fucking pochahontas

TG: the next time you step outside the breeze will speak to you

TG: it will tell you the secrets of the universe

TG: one of which will be that the thing that you just said was complete and utter bullshit

EB: fuckery, dave? really?

TG: i spill out six lines of sick verbage and the only thing you get out of it is fuckery

EB: :)

TG: why do i bother talking to you

EB: i don't know, dave.

EB: but even though you're a big loser i'm still kind of glad you do!

TG: are you going soft on me egbert

EB: ugh, nevermind. i was trying to be nice, but i guess you're too cool for that.

TG: youre unusually touchy today

TG: did something happen

EB: no. like i said, my day was pretty boring.

TG: is something up with your sister

EB: no.

TG: is it harley

EB: no.

TG: lalonde

EB: dave, there's nothing wrong, i swear. just let it go.

TG: serket

EB: dave.

TG: it is her isnt it

TG: what did she do

EB: dave.

TG: i told you about her but no you didnt listen and now look what happens

EB: dave.

TG: what

EB: shut up, please?

TG: not until you tell me whats eating at your ass

EB: ew.

TG: just answer the goddamn question

EB: there's nothing wrong, jeez!

TG: you dont go all sentimental on me unless youve been thinking heavy thoughts so you and i both know thats not true

TG: you can bitch to me bro i dont mind

EB: while i appreciate the offer, i don't have anything to complain about.

TG: john youre a liar

TG: i swear to god i will reach through this phone line and slap you

EB: just let it go, dave!

TG: no

EB: yes!

TG: no

EB: yes!!!!

TG: no

EB: yes!!!

TG: no

— ectoBiologist [EB] blocked turntechGodhead [TG] —

TG: shit

ERROR: MESSAGE NOT SENT — USER ectoBiologist [EB] HAS BLOCKED USER turntechGodhead [TG]

— turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBioligist [EB] at 23:44 — 

You sigh, blowing hot air out through your teeth as you lock your phone and glare intensely at the fire. Your breath fogs up the frozen night, and you remember travelling north once when you were really little—before life revolved around Dirk, before the Infection, before anything. Houston never got cold enough to see it, so you'd spent hours and hours just standing outside huffing and puffing until your lungs were frozen and you'd started coughing. Your parents hadn’t been pleased, but you thought it was the coolest shit ever. Now, while everyone is asleep, you take a moment to pretend you're a dragon. Big and strong and fearless and able to solve any problem. But no matter how hard you try, all you can blow out is fake smoke—no fire.

You’re not sure who you’re upset at—yourself or John—but you do know you’re unhappy. And that it’s going to be a long night.

* * *

**[5/22/37]**

By the time Sollux and Roxy trade shifts the next morning, John still hasn't unblocked you—and that's what glares neon in front of your face that something really isn't right. He's blocked you before—and, yeah, you have too—but it's never lasted more than a few hours at most. Half the time you aren’t serious; you poke and prod and tease at each other, and sometimes you do go too far—but you know at the end of the day that neither of you mean it. But you still can't message him, and that makes you indescribably upset for some reason.

You throw around blankets and kick logs and shoot brown-eyed glares at everyone around you as your group packs up to head out for another day of endless walking, but no one says much of anything. You'd spent half the night up on watch, so you're entitled to a bit of morning unpleasantness. Thank fucking God. You’re not sure how you’d be able to explain it, anyway.

You try asking Roxy about what's going on, but the two of you just end up arguing when she brings up the _totally untrue_ fact that every conversation the two of you have had lately ends up looping back around to John. So you set your own chum status to idle and focus on the world around you, instead.

Which is hells of boring, and doesn't actually keep your mind off what's bothering you. At all.

From Vriska's back, Terezi's voice floats up over the crunching of feet over frozen gravel as she cackles into the her phone’s receiver, and when you hear the electronic voice read the text response back to her you know that she's talking to the girl who types in dark green—Nepeta. The computer is having trouble with some words, though, so you think there must be more than a few typos scattered through her messages. She's tired, probably. It's late enough in the morning that she would normally be asleep.

Your brother is also busy tapping away at his phone. Roxy had come through with her promise, and in the past couple of weeks he'd kept up consistent contact with John's sister and some kid named Jake. It was good for him, you thought—and, looking at him now, brown hair matted from another night on the forest floor and his secondhand winter coat smudged with mud, you don't think you've ever seen him so relaxed. He's had to grow up too fast, you know. And not a day goes by when you wish you could just take him away to the farthest corners of the world where he'd be safe. But you know you can't, so you've done your best to keep him safe in other ways. You've prepared him—you've taught him how to fight, how to survive.

You wonder who he could have become if things had turned out differently. What he could have done with his life. Your stoic kid brother, always too smart for his own good and able to understand more than he should—in a perfect world, he would have made a name for himself and done great things. 

He glances up just in time to catch you staring, and both of his eyebrows shoot up. "What?"

"You're gettin' tall, kid."

He rolls his eyes, "Yeah, thanks. That's great piece of wisdom I couldn't go another day without."

"Just statin' facts."

"You sound like a lonely old man, Bro."

"And you sound like some shit teenager who's got a problem with authority."

"Fuck you."

"Watch your goddamn language, kid. I raised you better than that."

"You brought me up to be a lot of things, Bro, but a pansy-ass Southern belle wasn't one of them. If I want to fucking curse, I'll fucking curse." His phone beeps, pulling his attention back down, and he waves you off, successfully interrupting any of whatever you had been about to say. You're tempted to steal his phone again, but you've done it so many times in the past few weeks that the sneaky little shit's started to figure out your pattern, and the fun of it has started to wear off.

So you snort back at him and shake your head, instead. "Whatever, li'l man."

Toward the back of your group, you can hear Gamzee shuffling along, humming to himself. After you'd sat him down with Karkat and John on the other end of a Pesterchum memo to explain the situation, he'd started rationing out the plethora of drugs he'd brought with him. Even so, he's slowed down considerably. He's not stupid, you know. Creepy as fuck sometimes—yeah—but he's strong, and he's saved your life more times than you'd like to admit. You wouldn't have kept him around this long if he caused trouble. But when you hit the next town for tech supplies, you already know he'll disappear for a while—like he always does when you scavenge—to raid drug stores and grocery marts and corner shops for whatever over- and under-the-counter shit he can dig up, just in case. Now, you can't quite tell if he's talking with someone on his phone or just sort of staring at the screen, but as long as he's keeping his mind occupied you don't really care.

You feel your own phone vibrate, and your hopes definitely do _not_ jump up a little before you look at the screen.

— gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:01 — 

GG: hey coolkid!!!

For a moment, you consider letting the message sit without giving it a response. You’re tired and frustrated and just sort of generally pissed off at the world, but the thought of spending the next however-long in silence doesn’t exactly sound like a sugar-coated delicacy. So you suck it up and mentally kick yourself in the balls. No need for shitty self-pity—and at the very least, maybe _she_ could tell you what's going on. (Also, you might be a little bit lonely. You've gotten too used to having someone around you enjoy talking to for hours on end.)

TG: sup harley

TG: hows it going

GG: pretty good!!! i have some great news too!!!

TG: oh really please enlighten me

TG: i could use some good news right about now

GG: were packing up the last of our supplies now so we will be heading out tomorrow to meet you guys!!! :D

GG: we should run into you in a week or two because no offense but your group moves kind of really slow so we can cover more ground than you in half the time!!

GG: but thats totally okay because that means well get to hang out in person finally!!! :O

GG: so exciting!!!!!!! :DDD

TG: wow you seem unusually energetic today

TG: also thats pretty fuckin sweet and no offense taken its cool

TG: were carting a drugged up clown freak and a blind chick there is literally no way you would not be faster than us

GG: heehee im just really super pumped to meet you!!

GG: also i have to compensate for how grumpy everyone here is being ugh :(

TG: you go harley you dont let anyone bring you down

TG: although do i get to ask whats up or is that idk confidential hush hush kind of shit

GG: hell yes!!! also yeah its fine its just that its always kind of scary when teams leave and i just got back a few weeks ago so normally i wouldnt be going out so soon and everyone is just kind of generally upset

GG: but i really want to see you and besides theres no one better for the job than me and my team!!!!

GG: we kick all kinds of ass!!! ;)

Oh. Well. Now you feel like an idiot—and a selfish dick. John has every right to be mad at you, you think. You're taking his cousin and putting her in danger because you’re too lame to get to his base on your own.

TG: shit harley we didnt mean to pull you from the ranks or nothing

GG: ugh not you too!!! :(

GG: dave i want to come!!!!

GG: and theres not actually any other group get you anyway because karkat convinced nepeta to stay behind and i dont trust any of the junior squads to make a trip that far without messing things up and dying

TG: which would be all kinds of bad

GG: exactly!!!!!

GG: okay jake is glaring at me so i think i should probably go

GG: i just wanted to tell you that i will be seeing you soon!!!! :D

TG: yeah dont make the kid suffer

TG: see ya round harley

GG: bye!!!!!!

— gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:23 —

After that, you stop bugging John with messages he’ll never get, and spend the rest of the afternoon trudging along, acutely aware of how much your whole body just sort of really fucking _hurts._ Without endless, mindless conversation to distract you, you don’t have anything else to focus on. Almost everyone in Washington seems busy prepping for tomorrow, too, so eventually the others in your group are left to suffer in silence with you. You try not to take grim satisfaction in this, but fail horribly. Misery loves company, after all.

By the time you start seeing worn-out road signs boasting that there are only a few dozen miles left to the suburbs you've been heading toward, you're locked in a heated game of Extreme I-Spy with Terezi... and somehow losing. Badly. (You had thought it would be an easy win—an exercise in ironic douchebaggery—but when Vriska and Gamzee start laughing their goddamn asses off you figure out there might just be a bit of underhanded play going on behind your back. Traitors.) You're exhausted, frustrated, and hungry—and Dirk has watch tonight, so you know you won't be getting much sleep, anyway. It's not that you don't trust him to have your backs; no, you know the kid's got skill, but you're too much of a fucking _dad_ to let him sit up and face potential danger while you count sheep and float through fucking dreamland. He doesn't know you guard him like that, though. And you intend to keep it that way.

The five of settle in early for the night, far enough away from the town border that you won't reach it until late afternoon tomorrow and you're still a safe distance away should it be populated. You're building another fire tonight, too, so you can't take even the slightest risk of being seen. You decide to make the best of the extra time, though, and make a pass through the surrounding woods to see if you can find anything worth killing for dinner. It's been a while since any of you have had fresh meat, because you can't take it with you during the day and you're usually too exhausted to go looking for it in the evenings.

You're tired as fuck now, too, but you know you can't settle down just yet. You need to keep your blood pumping, or you won't be able to stay up with your brother during his shift. So you dump your packs and head out, shitty sword in hand. It's not the ideal weapon for hunting, but it's all you have and you know how to use it better than anyone you've ever met.

It's May, now—almost June—so you've got plenty of wildlife to choose from. Or, at least, you _should_. Abnormally-cold temperatures aside, you start to realize something is wrong when you circle half a mile outside your campsite without seeing anything— _anything_. No birds, no raccoons, no squirrels. It's like the whole world's gone silent, and before your brain's registered what that means your body is already running back toward camp.

Fuck.

You want some rational part of your head to tell you you’re overreacting, but you can't see the light of a fire through the trees and you involuntarily pick up the pace, flash-stepping 'til you're stumbling into Vriska. "What the _hell_ , Strider?" She whines, shoving you to the ground.

"Yo, my cherry brother—you feelin' motherfuckin' fine?" You hear Gamzee speak up, and it occurs to you then that everyone but Terezi is staring at you, and you're still standing against a tree like an idiot. You must make quite a sight, you think. Why were you running again? Oh, right. Shit.

"Where's Dirk?"

"The little ninja boy went out to go find us some motherfuckin' kindlin' for our ritual orange foot-toaster, but he should be back soon. You sure you're all up and alright, bro?"

You cough a little, trying to get your heart rate back under control because you're going to need your energy, you're going to need all the adrenaline you can save. "We're in a dead zone," you say, and everyone goes still.

Back in Houston, you'd had to live every day fighting. The city was filled with Infected, so you had to choose your buildings carefully when you left whatever base you'd decided to sleep in the night before. It was too easy to stumble across some sleeper cell or the occasional monster still awake with the sun, and you'd always had to be on your guard. Moving during the day, you'd stayed alive—and you'd fought and fought and fought. But here in the wilderness, things are different. The things you run across aren't as frequent, but somehow deadlier. They fight to survive, just like you, because they don’t have an all-you-can-eat a corpse buffet to dine at every night.

So far, you've had your fair share of not-so-casual run-ins, but dead zones are a shitstorm easily a dozen times worse. They're the trademark of a pack on the hunt, and—now—you're right in the middle of their territory.

Without a word, Vriska and Gamzee turn around and start rolling up the blankets you've laid out. Terezi curls around your bags, pulling them toward her and shuffling through in search of the cane she'd spent yet another day without.

The five of you are trapped—you don't know where the group is, but you know they're nearby. If you try to move, you'll make enough noise to attract attention, but you've got a better chance of surviving without the added weight of supplies bogging you down. So you’ll stay put, but you won't get any sleep. The less you make your presence known, the less likely you are to bring predators your way.

Terezi starts handing out weapons as you watch, tossing a set of juggler's clubs in Gamzee's general direction and a machete somewhere near Vriska. You heft up your own sword and nod to the two of them, signaling that you're going to go look for your brother. The little shit had better be alright. (Fuck, you really hope he's alright.)

You head out in the direction Vriska points, and flash step as silently as you can. It’s hard in the woods—you're constantly having to avoid sticks and branches and roots and leaves—but your body's moving on autopilot while your brain clicks into overdrive. Every breath you take sounds like a goddamn hurricane in the silence, and—why the hell is the sun setting so fast?

As long as you can see, the battlefield is even—but the minute the world goes dark you're royally fucked, because they'll be able to see and you'll be forced to fight blind.

You don't know how long you walk, but eventually you start heading in a circle around your temporary base, thinking Dirk may have turned, too.

(Damn kid—where is he? Where the hell is he? He’s going to give you a goddamn heart attack. Shit, he’d better be okay. You’ll kick his fucking ass if he isn’t. Shit.)

Something shifts in the corner of your eye and—fuck, _fuck_ —you freeze mid step, barely catching yourself as your muscles strain to keep your body still. Your fingers squeeze around the hilt of your sword, and you hold your breath, waiting, waiting, waiting for it to move again. You can't tell what it is, though, because you don't dare turn your head. You hope it's Dirk. Or, at the very least, you hope it hasn’t found Dirk. The body shifts again, and no—it's _not_ your brother, because his eyes aren’t that bright in the darkness and—

Your phone beeps, shattering the silence, and everything speeds up almost too fast for you to follow.

* * *

It's eyes are locked on you, but the minute you see its head turn you turn too, shitty sword at the ready, aimed at its neck. Teeth bared, nails poised, it dives at you and you swing, blade hitting just a little too low but you're too far gone to register the pain in your arm as you wrench your weapon out of its shoulder. It yowls in pain, snarling, and _fuck_ any kind of cover you had is gone, now. They know you're here, if they didn't already. You take two more swings as it swipes at you, and just as quickly as the whole started, it's over. There's a hacked-up, headless thing lying at your feet and you don't even care about stealth anymore because you're pretty fucked anyway. So you call for your brother, yelling low and loud and angry—Striders don't do _scared_ , so you compensate—and you run back the direction you came.

You need to get to open area, you think. That's the only way you've got a chance. In the woods, the Infected have the advantage because they can leap and climb and scale and they _know_ the area, as much as a wild animal can _know_ something, and you _can't_ and _don't_.

There's a blur of movement at your side and you almost swing again, but stop the moment when the peeking starlight glints off another blade. "It took you long enough, you little shit," you say, and your voice is winded and raw and relieved.

"Yell louder next time."

"Listen better next time."

You don't fistbump—you can't, because you're both running and crashing through the branches and trying not to trip—but you make a mental note to give the kid one later. The most epic of invisible brofists, a limited-edition thing that only happens post-life-or-death situations. The two of you run across three more razor-toothed grey monsters on your way, but you take them down just like you always have. Just like you always do.

Striders are unstoppable, after all. Practically invincible.

A high-pitched scream reaches your ears just as you break through to the others, and even though your eyes are open you're not really seeing because _no, no, no_.

Gamzee bashes its head in, but it's too late.

Terezi slumps to the ground, and—fuck, _fuck_ —there's so much blood.

* * *

You don't have time to process what's happening, because they're everywhere, crawling from every corner of the woods. Dozens of them—more than you've seen since you left Houston, and you think the five of you might have stopped a little closer to the city than you'd originally thought. Because this isn't the kind of group you find just wandering through the woods—it’s an outpouring from someplace populated. You swing and slash and leap and step, and you can hear the others do the same. But you're outnumbered, outskilled, and in some unheeded moment of pre-death clarity you realize this— _this_ —is why John and the others don't get involved with Approachers. With groups like you.

Because you don't always make it, and that's a hard thing to deal with.

"We have to get _out_!" You shout—

—or do you? You can't tell over the roaring in your ears—

and you vaguely hear Vriska call back, screeching and panicked, " _Where_?"

"The highway—head for the goddamn highway!" One, two—another head falls and you turn to hack the arm off another one. You’re locked in. You need room to move. You need room to fight—and those are things you don’t have here in the forest. Staying put is pointless, now, because you’ve already been found.

"How will that—" _hack, scream, hack_ "—how the hell will that help us at _all_?"

"Flat ground!" _slice_ "Gamzee—fuck, _Gamzee_ —get Terezi and _run_!" You can't tell if he follows your orders or not, because you're too busy putting your body between TZ and the things still coming for her. "Watch their backs, Serket! _Watch their goddamn backs!_ "

Three more fall, and the night's so dark you can't tell what color their blood is. It could be a rainbow. It could be black. It could be red, red, red, just like yours and Dirk’s and Terezi’s, too.

"Bro!" Your brother’s yelling now, too—and Dirk _never_ yells, so you know that something's wrong. He's your kid—your goddamn kid—so you don't even think before you act like a fucking idiot and take your eyes off the fight to turn your head and—

He's still on his feet, thank fuck. He's still fighting. He's still alive. So what the hell is he shouting for?

"Follow them!" You yell back, and you see his mouth open just before you hit the ground, too many rows of shark-mouth knives tearing at your side.

* * *

You kick and you claw and you punch and you finally get a grip back on your sword and you slice, slice, slice until all that's left attached to you is the head lodged in your side and one hand buried deep in your lower back. Your body's on fire, burning, burning, burning—and fuck, it hurts. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. _Everything hurts_.

You're on the ground for less than a second, but that's still too long because your little shit of a brother is still fighting and no—you're not going to make it out of this alive, you realize. There’s no way you can be in so much pain and still survive. But you sure as hell can make sure _he_ does.

So you bury your blade in the ground and use it to pull yourself up, planting a kick firmly in the chest of another thing lunging your way. You must make quite a sight, you think—covered in blood, body parts sticking out of places they shouldn't—but the weight of the head is throwing off your balance so you brace yourself with one hand on the hilt of your sword and pull, rip, tear, _scream_ as the teeth rake out of your side, taking most of your skin and muscle and you don't want to think about what else with it.

" _Follow them!_ " You scream, yanking back your blade and hacking, hacking, hacking away at everything around you. There's blood in your eyes and blood on your hands and holy _shit_ , you're in so much pain. You can't get a good grip on the hilt of your sword because it's too slick, and if you're fighting blind at this point you're not even really sure you'd notice. " _Get your ass away from here!_ "

"Bro!" He's screaming back, but you're not sure if you're imagining it because that's all he seems to be saying.

" _Go! Fucking go!_ "

" _No!_ "

"Use your goddamn _head_ , kid!" But do you really say it out loud? You don't know.

There's a snarl by your ear and you swing again and again and again, and you think you hear him say something back but it's drowned out by the noise. The body drops, and your eyes are stinging, and it's dark—but when you glance around, you can't see him anymore.

Thank God. Thank fucking God.

You let yourself go, then—you don't think about anything, you just act. Complete mind blackout, program wiped and re-written: _Stay away from them! Stay back! Stay away from them!_

* * *

You don't know how much time passes, but when your body finally gives out you fall, nothing tries to tear at you again. You can't tell if the forest is quiet, though, because your pulse is loud in your ears and there's a ringing in your head that won't go away—and you don't know if you actually succeeded or not, because you don't know how many monsters got past you toward the end. You drop your sword, but the blade doesn't clang against the rocky ground. It hits something soft, and you wonder if it's a body. There are so many bodies around you. You think you might be crumpled up on one, too.

But you feel naked without your sword, so you reach out to get it again, and your hand brushes something fuzzy and dry and—

The supplies.

They're dead, you think. They have to make it to the city or they're dead. There’s shelter and food and everything else there, but they have no way to tell anyone what happened, because Gamzee's miracle box is tucked in with the blankets and bandages. And if Jade stops to wait for the five of you at the rendezvous point _no one is going to show up,_ because there’s no way they’ll be able to take TZ that far. Fuck, Terezi. You hope she’s still alive.

You have to let them know. If it’s the last thing you do, you have to let them know. You still have your phone. Does your phone still work? You don’t know, but you’re fading fast so you have to do _something_ before you can’t move your arms anymore.

You think it's still in your pocket, so you slide your hand down to your hips across your body because you've lost feeling in most of _everything_. And _yes_ , it's there.

What's your password? Do you have a password?

Your vision is blurring and your head is spinning and you think you've lost _all_ of your blood by now. All of it. And you're grateful, because that means you'll get to die. You won't have to turn to a monster like the dead things around you—you'll just get to die.

You get the damn thing to unlock and the Pesterchum window is already open from earlier and—is that blue?

But you don't bother reading whatever's on the screen. You just smash your fingers against the keyboard and hope that whoever’s on the other end can understand you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! I know I promised we'd see Eridan, Cronus, and Rufioh in this chapter, but it ended up being so long I couldn't fit in that particular part. So! They'll pop up next chapter. Other than that, I don't have much to say about this chapter! I'm happy to finally have John and Dave interacting. 
> 
> If you have any questions, comments, just want to say hi, etc. feel free to hit me up on my tumblr, egbertiian! I love hearing from you guys, and feedback is always appreciated. 
> 
> And super, super special thank you to jackfrostitution on tumblr for beta reading this chapter and just generally being a fantastic friend!


	8. Code Orange

**== > BE THE FRUSTRATED DOCTOR**

Degrees don't mean a thing these days—they're just paper. The only thing that counts is your ability to do the work necessary to keep your friends and family alive, doctorate be damned. And you're qualified enough for what you do—hell, you might even be _over_ qualified in some respects. You've poured over every textbook and online resource available; dug through the University's medical libraries for whatever you could find; stayed up for days on end, studying for life-or-death exams and homework assignments that could mean the continued survival of life as you’ve come to know it. And you have more field experience than any student near your age. Regardless of how things may have been done in the past, by the standards you've been living on for the past half-decade you _are_ a doctor. And, according to your friends, a fantastic one. You don't really see it, though—you struggle. You fight yourself and your patients and sickness you can’t see. And you've made mistakes.

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you really don’t have time to think about how much you may or may not suck, because you have work do to. Your friends are heading out into the field tomorrow, and it's your job to make sure they can handle it—to make sure they're physically ready. Beyond the border, even the slightest slip up could lead downhill to a world of problems. Fatal ones.

And—oh, God—you don't want to burn another body. You've built too many funeral pyres already.

"Quit fidgeting, Eridan. The longer you're here, the less time I have to look over whoever is left," you release the blood pressure pump on your friend’s arm and sigh, ignoring the eye roll you get in return. The two of you are in your lab, at the far end of the room where you keep the equipment for basic exams like this, along with Eridan’s brother for some weird reason. You've spent most of the late afternoon shuffling scouts through the same necessary process they've all gone over a hundred times, and quite frankly you're tired. The young man you’re currently dealing with—a member of Karkat's camp from the same military outpost as Feferi—isn't as bad as some of the stubborn assholes you've had to tolerate, but your patience is wearing thin and you can practically feel whatever semblance of a bedside manner you might have crumbling away. This whole mission has you filled with mixed feelings you don’t like—on one hand, you want to meet the group you've gotten close to over the past month-and-some, but on the other you're _pissed_ and _worried_ that your family has to leave again so soon.

Especially after what happened last time.

In the two weeks between your birthday and the last scouting group’s planned homecoming, the off-site comm. equipment gave out twice more before Jade and Nepeta made the decision to cut their losses and shut the system down altogether. It had been terrifying. While teams normally didn't maintain constant contact with the base, Sollux and Karkat had at least been able to keep track of their movements and make sure they were alright. But without any kind of link they were essentially travelling blind—and you were left waiting for word you knew would never come, because they couldn’t tell you they were still alive just the same as they couldn’t call for help when things went wrong. Days after their planned return, they'd shown up at the south perimeter border bloodied, bruised, and exhausted. Scraped up, but not suffering from much more than a few minor injuries and dehydration. That is, with one notable exception.

A knock on your doorframe cuts off whatever snarky retort Eridan had started to bite back at you, and you hear Cronus drawl out a lazy, "Hey, scooch! Hav-ven't seen you up and about lately," from the chair he’s sprawled across. 

Like Kankri and Karkat, the Ampora siblings don't share the same family resemblance they might have before you found them. Eridan’s Infection didn’t change a thing about their relationship, though—according to Feferi, it’s just as painfully antagonistic as it’s always been. Really, you're not even really sure why Cronus has decided to crash in your office for his brother's physical. He works with your sister and Rose as a member of the general care squad, so the kind of danger Eridan and the others who make rounds on security and off-base missions have to stay prepared for doesn’t really apply to him. He hasn’t driven you up the wall yet, though, so you’ve just been ignoring him, hoping he’ll get bored and leave. You don’t really have the energy to kick him out, anyway.

You toss the blood pressure band back onto the rack and scoot your chair around to see what the sudden commotion is all about, and then you’re on your feet in a second. "Rufioh! You're supposed to be resting."

The young would-be Native American waves some paper in your direction and shakes his head, "Nah, Doc—I'm feeling fine. It's a nice day, and I asked your doll of a cousin if there was anything I could do to help out since you won't clear me for field work this go-around."

You run both hands under your glasses and make your way over to where he’s standing, ignoring Cronus’s snort in the background. Tavros’s cousin is a full head taller than you, but he has the sense to look sheepish when you stare him down. "First off, it's forty-two degrees outside. It's not snowing, yeah, but that's not exactly a desert summer. Secondly, the reason I didn't—and _won't_ —let Jade take you out with the team is because you're still adjusting, whether you'll admit it or not."

"Geez, doesn't feel that cold outside. You sure?"

"No, I'm totally fucking with you for my own sick sense of entertainment," you can't help but deadpan, and Cronus actually starts laughing. Harsh. Maybe you've been talking with Dave too much.

Before Rufioh can reply, though, there's an over-dramatic sigh from somewhere behind you, and Eridan whines, "Can I _go_ now-w?" in a way that might give a poor passerby the impression you’ve been holding him captive in some underground dungeon. Or that he’s actually a toddler. Either comparison works, you decide.

"I still have to check your vision. Glasses are hard to come by, so if you mess up your eyes I'm putting you back on general care with your brother," you say without turning around, and he groans. Rufioh hasn't moved, so you raise your eyebrows at him and try to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. God, there are too many people in your office. "The fact that you're getting used to your body's new resistance to cooler temperatures is a good thing, but you need to be more self-aware. There's a lot of stuff you'll have to start readjusting your habits to deal with—which is something we've talked about, so I'm not really sure why we're still having this conversation."

"Come _on_ , Doc. It's been, like, a month. I'm _fine_."

"It's barely been three weeks. And, no. We're not having this stupid debate again. Doctor's orders, blah, blah, blah. I've dealt with this before, so I know it takes more than a few days to get used to the internal and external changes that come post-Infection. The important thing is that you're alive, so until you've got an _okay_ from everyone who's supposed to be keeping an eye on you, I'm not sending you out. Now, I'm pretty sure you didn't just come to complain about that, 'cause if you did I'm definitely going to throw you out."

He rolls his shoulders, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he shuffles the papers in his hands around a bit. "Yeah, yeah—okay. Jade just wanted me to let you know how they're doing so you can start re-stocking the med kit when you're ready. Pretty much everyone's packed, but they're all still over in the Cabinet working out last-minute stuff."

"What did they decide to do about the comm. equipment? Sollux never did figure out why it kept jamming."

"I'm still conv-vinced it was those guys they're going to get," Cronus breaks in, and you shake your head, turning back around to where he's now completely draped over not one but _two_ perfectly good pieces of furniture made for _sitting_. "Think about it—the problems didn't start up until you all started talking to them."

"Get your feet off my table. And we already ruled that out, like, a hundred years ago. The first blip came before Dave and his group ever found their hub. It's just weird that whatever was affecting your signal didn't hit theirs."

Rufioh shrugs. "Whatever happened to screw us over, Jade decided to take some kind of new pack with them—something the geek squad has been working on since we got back. I don't know too much about it. Not my thing."

"Whatever they think will work. Now, as great as it's been to see your shining face in my territory, I really do have work to do. Are those the supply lists?" he nods and hands over what he’s holding. "Thanks. Tell them I'll take a look once I finish this. Go see your cousin first, though. He's in the infirmary, and he'll probably want to know you're up and about."

"Aw, come on. The kid's just going to lecture me worse than you've been doing."

"He's your family, and he's worried about you. Go talk to him, or I'll just call him down. And none of us here really want to get in the middle of whatever drama you two are going to start throwing out."

“But—“

“ _Go_.”

When you finally get Rufioh out the door and heading upstairs to where Tavros is tending to your other patients, Cronus's boots are back on your table, but he's got the chair leaned back and his eyes closed so you just sort of kick the back legs out and send him sprawling onto the floor on your way back to where Eridan is still sulking. You make a point of getting through the rest of his physical quickly, before you usher both of them on their way, too. There's a moment of quiet peace now that you’re finally alone, so you take a minute to spin around in your really intense, holy-shit-it’s-so-plush swivel chair to clear your head before settling in to look over the records Rufioh dropped off. You've got a bit of time before your next would-be patient wanders by—or you have to go looking for him, whichever comes first—so you decide to get through what you can while you wait.

Without the constant flow of people moving through your lab to distract you, though, your thoughts start to stray a bit, and you can’t help but wonder how Dave and his friends are doing. You feel guilty for blocking him. You really do. He'd been nothing but nice—in his own weird, roundabout way—but you'd been upset and he'd been the only one there at the time to take the brunt of your frustration. It doesn't take long for you to figure out that you won't be able to focus if you don't clear things up at least a little, so you shuffle through the clutter on your desk for your phone and hope he's online.

— ectoBiologist [EB] unblocked turntechGodhead [TG] —

— ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 18:28 — 

EB: hey, dave!

EB: look, i'm really sorry about yesterday. there is kind of a lot going on here and i took it out on you, and that was really not cool.

EB: i know you're probably mad at me, but i just wanted to let you know.

EB: yeah.

EB: i hope things aren’t too boring out in middle of wherever. it'll be pretty cool to hang out with your ugly face when you finally get here.

EB: assuming you still want to talk to me, i don't know.

EB: it's been kind of a long time, so i don't think you're going to respond. that's okay though. see you later, i guess.

— ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 18:41 — 

You're more than a little disappointed that you don’t actually get to talk with him, but you figure he's either upset with you or busy. Although you really hope it's the latter.

Your friendship was kind of unexpected, and you’re honestly still surprised at how quickly the two of you clicked. You've never really had a friend quite like him before, and even though you'll die before you admit it to his face—he doesn't need the ego boost, you're sure—you actually do think he's pretty cool. Dave is everything you had wished you were when you were a kid—smooth, talented, creative, funny, and undeniably badass. Now, you know you wouldn't fit well into that persona, but you still wonder what life would have been like if things had been different. You're happy you met him, though, in a weird roundabout kind of way. Somehow, he doesn’t quite seem to fit in the world you’ve wrapped yourself in since the Vaccination, and the change is… nice. You make a mental note to thank Roxy for convincing you to message him.

Now, disappointed and tired, you set your phone aside and start plowing through the lists in as much of a whirlwind you can muster. You’re so wrapped up organizing and reorganizing, making notes to yourself about what you'll need to supplement their packs with and jotting down instructions for Jane and Rose when they start loading up food, that you barely notice when the sun starts setting. Rufioh comes down eventually, and waves a quick goodbye through your doorway before he heads back out to help the others. You can't help but wonder what Tavros had to say to him, but he doesn’t seem too happy so you don’t push the issue.

When your phone finally does buzz again, you don't answer right away. You figure it's one of the team members over in the Cabinet asking if you've finished going over the records—but when you finally do glance at the screen, your heart stops beating and _fuck_.

— turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 21:01 —

TG: hepl goy hit in a deas zone probbbbb

TG: gonna be dea dsonn

TG: tz hurt

TG: evryom went to th cituy for shelte

TG: find them

TG: not sute ho mnay stil on ther tail

TG: save tem

TG: sav di

TG: sa dirk

TG: fimf dirk

EB: dave! dave, what happened?

TG: city

TG: hep them

EB: we're coming, dave.

EB: just hang on, okay?

EB: don't fucking die, dave. you're going to be fine.

TG: fidn dilkkkkkkk

— turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 21:21 — 

You stare at your phone for a full minute before you realize _no_ you _don't have time_ , and you're on your feet before your brain registers what your body is doing. The chair rolls out behind you at the movement and you stumble, tripping, but you don’t even notice it because you're already one step ahead, too busy sprinting, sprinting, sprinting across the cold ground all the way to the Cabinet—what you’ve taken to calling the old arts college. Now, its rooms have been cleared out and the whole thing turned into a supply storage building for everything you need to stay alive. Food, water, commodities—and the armory is there, too.

You burst through the door and shout for your cousins, Karkat, anyone—because you're not sure where they are, and it’ll take too long to check each cell.

"John, what the hell is going on?" Jade calls from somewhere down the hall, and you turn on your heel into the ammunition storage locker, chest heaving and out of breath.

"I'm calling a code orange," you practically yell, and only when a box of buckshot shells hits the ground with a clinking _bang_ do you realize there are other people in the room, too. Jake, Horuss—Equius's cousin and a member of your own camp—and Rufioh are all staring at you like you've grown a second head, but Jade immediately takes charge of the situation.

"They've been ambushed?" she says, and you know you've got her full attention when her tone goes all stern like that. When you were kids, you never would have guessed that someday she would be capable of keeping her head under pressure, but after Grandpa Harley died she was forced to step up and take on the duties he'd left in her care. You've always admired her for that.

"I don't know what happened—I just got a message from Dave that something went down, and he's not doing well. I don't think he's with the others, but— _shit_ , Jade."

"If you're calling a code orange, call a code orange. I'll meet you in the conference room in less than ten." You nod, but you don't know if she sees because she's already turning back around to talk to the others. Everything feels like it’s moving too fast and too slow all at once, but by the time you make it to the library you've let yourself slip into the familiar detachment of a doctor in surgery. Leader-mode, Roxy’s told you on more than one occasion. You just call it surviving.

Sollux and Equius are in the tech lab—you can hear them yelling at each other from the entranceway—but the minute you enter and they see your face, they drop dead silent. "Sollux, open up the emergency thread and get everyone here, now."

He doesn't question it, and immediately starts typing away at his own desktop setup. Equius blinks at you, asks if everything is alright, and you want to snap in his face because _no_ , clearly everything is _not_ alright. Instead, though, you ask him if he knows where Karkat is, and he tells you that Nepeta came to get him a while back. Before you get the chance to say anything else, both of your phones buzz and the emergency chat board opens up on your screens. You don't bother sitting down—you don't think you could stay still—so you just start pacing.

"Are you going to tell uth what'th going on?" Sollux asks, bouncing in his chair.

"Can you trace the last spot Dave’s router checked in?"

"Yeah, thure. But what'th _happening_?"

"Just do it, Sollux."

The television screen lights up and you see the location pinpointed on the map. It's near the base of Wyoming, just outside this tiny little city that looks smaller than the neighborhood you grew up in—and you decide that's it. That's the place Dave must have been referring to. But—God—it’s still so far away.

Soon, other members of the main teams start racing in, demanding to know what's happening while you tell them sit down and wait, because you’re only going to explain it once. You don't even really have a clear picture of it all, either—you're just speculating. The only thing you _are_ sure of is that you need to get there—to that little dot on the map—as quickly as possible. Because Dave and the others could be dead now. Right now. While you're just circling a cramped conference of worried faces.

Karkat and Nepeta are the last to enter, but when your best friend starts yelling and getting everyone riled up you know it's time to take control. So you slam both hands on the table and tell him to shut up, _please_. And he does.

"Twenty minutes ago, Dave sent me a couple of jumbled messages asking for help. He wasn't making much sense, but from what I picked up their group must have made their way into a dead zone."

Sollux pipes up at that. "The latht I heard from him, they were thetting up camp for the night tho they could head to town in the morning for thupplieth."

"So they must have camped _in_ the dead zone."

You hear Nepeta let out a little pitiful whining noise, and suddenly you think you'd like to make a sound like that, too. Because oh, God, camping in a dead zone— "But that's, like, _suicide_!" She says frantically, and you nod.

"From what I could gather, Dave is separated from the rest of his group, and Terezi is injured. I don't know what condition the others are in, but if they were ambushed by a pack on the hunt we know things can't be good," you say, and you have to clear your throat a bit before you get out the next part. Shit. Shit. "And I don't think Dave is doing well. At all."

Karkat growls from his seat, and you suddenly feel like you need to glare right back. "And what do you expect us to do about it? It'll take weeks to get there. By then, they could be—"

"Don't you fucking _dare_ say it, Karkat. These are our _friends_."

"I _know_ they're our friends, dumbass. You don’t think I care? I'm just trying to put things into a rational perspective."

"We’ll go tonight," Jade breaks in. "We're not leaving them behind, so at the very least we have to get as much ahead of everything as we can."

"And how the hell do you expect to get there in time?"

You run a hand through your hair, and cut in before your cousin can answer—because everyone is going to start shouting in a second, you just know it. "We'll take the trucks."

There's a pause as you let that sink in, and slowly a few heads slowly start to bob up and down in agreement. On base, you have six working vehicles, only for use in extreme emergencies. Cars are big, bulky, loud, and hard to maintain on the run—especially with the fuel shortage—but on wheels you can cut down three weeks worth of walking time to just a few hours. It's risky—if something happens, you'll be stranded out there in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of injured people and a roaring beacon blaring out your location to every Infected for miles—but it's your best bet.

"Yeah, okay—okay, that could work," Karkat nods, sitting back, but before you can say anything Jade starts waving her arms around.

"What do you mean _we_ , John? You're not coming with us—you can't. That was the _deal_. No off-site missions because you need to keep things running here."

"I am, Jade. You're going to need me, and you're going to need Tavros, too. There are five people out there, two of which we know are seriously injured, and I'm not about to jump to the conclusion that the others aren't hurt, too. Karkat can handle what needs to be done here, so I _am_ going with you."

"No, John."

Your sister, who's been sitting quietly beside Jake, finally speaks up. "I'm with Jade on this one, John— _please_. You haven’t been out in the field in ages."

"They're my friends, Jane. I'm not leaving them behind—and Dirk is your friend, too. What if something happened to him?" She pauses then, and glares at you. Everyone's glaring at everyone, now.

"We do not have time to claw at each other's throats if the situation is as dire as you make it out to be," Rose sits forward, placing both hands on the table. "John is our leader, and if he pulls rank and demands to go we can do nothing but trust his judgment. For now, it would be best if we gathered the team together. If you really are leaving tonight, I suggest you do it quickly." Her tone leaves no room for argument, and you shoot down anyone who tries with counter-points of your own.

Soon, things are back to working like the well-oiled machine they need to be, the rest of the evening passes in a blur of movement and motion. A four-door and a pickup are pulled from the tiny, six-vehicle fleet you've used less times than you can count on two hands, and Equius starts checking them over for travel. Everyone else splits up to regroup and reorganize, and you head back to the infirmary.

After explaining the situation to Tavros, your little assistant freaks out but agrees to help. Like all refugees, he's been trained to work with a weapon and defend himself, but you don't think he's ever actually been out on a mission before. He's determined to help, though, so the two of you set to work sorting out what you'll need for every possible scenario you might run into. You quiz him as you go along, asking him about what to do in different situations and how to approach certain split-second problems, and he passes with flying colors just like you knew he would. By the time the two of you are packed, you call Kankri in and brief him on what he'll need to keep in mind while you're away. He'll take charge of the patients in your place, and though you doubt you'll be gone for more than a day you’ve learned that it always pays to be prepared.

It's just before midnight when you all meet back at the trucks to leave, last-minute supplies and weapons in hand. Equius has his head buried under the hood of a rugged-looking SUV, and you can see Horuss helping Eridan load cases of water into the back. Tavros stands awkwardly off to the side, looking nervous with both arms wrapped around the medical bag you helped him prepare, so you wave a little in his direction to catch his attention. He flashes you a shaky, determined smile, and you know he’s going to be fine.

Meanwhile, Jake and Jade are just about at each other’s throats with your sister between them, trying in vain to moderate an argument that might soon come to blows. Earlier, Jade had refused to let him go on the grounds that he was needed to stay in charge of things on-base as usual, but Jake isn’t have any of that for the same reason you're refusing to be left behind. He’s become good friends with Dave’s little brother, you know, so you understand where his frustration is coming from.

In an effort to diffuse the ticking time-bomb of a Harley-English fallout, you step over and put a hand on your cousin’s shoulder. "Jake, please—we'll need you to be ready for us when we get back. You're a heavy fighter, but that's the kind of person we need backing the base while _we're_ not here."

"I _know_ ,” he seethes, and now he’s staring blades at you, too. "That's the same devilfucking rubbish I've been fed every _single_ time some mess happens that I'm not allowed to be a part of."

"It's a compliment. We're relying on you to watch our backs."

"The world isn't going to bite the bullet in a day! People here are capable enough to run through security cycles on their own without me nannying their goings-on."

"The world used to be a lot larger, Jake. Nowadays, it's plenty possible this whole system we've got going _could_ collapse in a day. See how fast this whole thing happened? Three hours ago, we thought nothing could go wrong."

"That's exactly why—"

"You're staying."

A car door slams, and before your cousin can argue with you any more a snarky voice yells over to you from where the two vehicles are parked. "Hey, fearless leader—we're all set and ready to go once the meathead gives us the all-clear. You in?" Meenah, Feferi's older sister and member of your camp—much like the Amporas—hops down from the pickup’s bed. She's adjusting the straps on her gloves, so you know she's starting to get impatient. She never really connected with any of the Approachers in Dave's group, but the tense atmosphere is enough to put anyone on edge.

"Yeah, I'm coming," you call back, and give one last pat on Jake's shoulder before you head over to where the tan-skinned young woman is watching you, arms crossed. As quickly as you can, you strap your duffle down between an extra fuel canister and what looks like a case of Jade's M1 ammo. Your sledgehammer will stay inside the car with you, ready at hand in case something happens.

You're just hopping back down to the ground when you hear a very distinct voice yell, "Nepeta, _wait_!" and look up in time to see Karkat falling behind his girlfriend as she sprints down the hill to where you’ve all gathered.

"Don't tell me what to do!"

"I'm not—just— _ugh_ ," he throws his hands in the air just as the Nepeta skids to a stop by her best friend, nearly ramming into his side in the process. Equius, startled and still half-buried in engine parts, smacks the back of his head on the overhanging car hood and nearly drops whatever he had been working on.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Nepeta—what are you doing here?" He huffs, standing up stiffly in some kind of horrible effort to make it look like nothing happened. Smooth.

She beams, bouncing on the balls of her feet and on the straps of her backpack. "I'm helping!"

Karkat shuffles up, then, and you can see how tense he looks, shoulders hunched with both hands shoved back in his pockets. "This is fucking ridiculous. We'd already made a deal that you weren't taking the next mission—you fucking _promised_."

"Circumstances changed, Karkitty," she bites back. "I’m no good to anyone here."

"So we're sending off the backbones of this whole goddamn organization on a spur-of-the-moment honkbeast-chase in the middle of the night? What happened to the fucking _system_?"

Meenah groans, and soon both of you have been roped into yet another argument about what feels like the same thing, over and over. "Chill your tiny tits, shouty. We'll be gone twenty-four hours tops if everythin' goes well—which it will—so you ain't got nothin' to worry about. Hell, I bet most people here won't even realize doctor-boy and his cousin and whoever else are gone."

You nudge her shoulder and scowl. "You make it sound like we're the only ones going."

"I believe the point Miss Peixes is trying to make is that those of us who run the highest chance of a noticed absence will likely leave and return undetected," Horuss breaks in as he approaches, and Nepeta nods. "Therefore the risks involved in the decisions of who stays and who goes are significantly less than if the journey were to take the several weeks we had initially anticipated."

At that, Jake and Jade start glaring at each other again, and you want to smack everyone upside their heads because you’re _sick_ of these looping arguments. You just want to _leave_. Time is ticking away while you stand around picking at each other, so you sigh and end whatever fight is about to happen before it even starts. "Alright, then. We'll split up into two teams, as planned. The pickup is a two-seater, so Meenah and I will take that and whatever supplies we need to shuffle around to make room for Nepeta with the rest of you." You get hugged from the side at that, and you ruffle Nepeta’s hair for a split-second as you wave your other hand at the others. "Come on, guys. If we're going, we need to _go_."

Twenty minutes later, last-minute goodbyes have been exchanged and everyone is strapped in for the trip. Both of your groups have a wireless hub to keep in contact along the way, so Sollux will be your acting guidance system on the road. But no matter how many non-existent speed laws you break, once you're on the highway you're trapped with nothing to do but stare out at the darkened Washington scenery. Meenah insists on taking the first shift, so you’re left feeling helpless the passenger seat. The first hour passes with you staring blankly at your cell phone screen, trying to will back online the five screen names that’ve been blacked out for too long.

* * *

You only stop once along the way to refuel and switch drivers, but by the time you pull onto the highway just a few miles north of where you need to be it's already mid-afternoon. All in all, you manage to shave five and a half hours off what should have been an eighteen-hour trip by never dipping below ninety miles-per-hour, but that's still thirteen hours on the road. You don't know how bad your friends' injuries are, but any time spent in transit is another second you’re not doing your job—keeping the people you care about alive. Numbers run through your head before you can stop them: how long it takes for a human body to bleed out, how long it takes for Infection to set in, hemorrhaging, exhaustion, and a host of other things you wish you could just wipe from your brain.

When you finally enter the city, one of the first things you notice is how pristine most of the buildings are—like they've never been touched. There are a few broken windows and smashed-in doors, but the damage nothing like what you've grown used to seeing in places like Seattle. That, of course, could mean one of two things—either the town was evacuated, or completely consumed before help could arrive. With the sun still so high in the sky, though, it's hard to tell whether the place is empty or the population of whatever’s left is lying in wait. The place itself isn't large, but you have no idea where the others could be holed up in hiding. That leaves you with a lot of ground to cover.

The first Infected spots you before you even realize it's nearby, and that’s how you know something’s wrong. One minute you're driving along, trying your best to peer through windows and check for fresh blood trails that might lead you to your friends—and the next, there's something attached to the passenger side, clawing at the glass. Meenah doesn't miss a beat, and she swings the door open while you're still in motion, knocking it to the ground just in time for the truck's back wheels to roll over its lower half. You know that won't do much other than slow it down, but the whole thing enough to get your attention. You're not alone.

You get Meenah to send a message to the others in the SUV just in time for three more monsters to appear, sprinting alongside the truck, attracted by either the sounds of the engine or the thing you just ran over. You plow forward, not pausing because you know the minute you do you're screwed—you’ll be sitting ducks trapped in a metal cage.

"We need to find them soon," you say, and it occurs to you then that your hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but you can't relax. "If there are so many around this early, there's no telling what's found them by now. Especially if they came after dark." Meenah hums at you, eyes fixed out the window as you speed through neighborhoods and past shopping centers. At the rate you're moving to outrun what's behind you, searching carefully is almost impossible. "Any word from the others?"

"Sweat-face said they weren't seein' what we're seein', but I'm thinkin' it's only a matter of time. There's no way this many freaks are out and they missed it."

"That doesn't make any sen—" suddenly, the car lurches as something hits you from behind, and you slam the breaks as a reflex. The sudden stop sends a grey body crashing across the truck bed into the back windshield, and before you can even think about the damage it might have caused it's crawling over the roof, clawing at the front pane and blocking your view of the street. You throw the vehicle in reverse and hit the gas _hard_ , and in seconds it’s scrambling to get a grip on the slick metal hood.

"Where the _hell_ did you get your license?" Meenah screeches as you put the car back in drive and speed forward again, rolling over the creature now struggling to get up in the middle of the road.

"They didn't really cover apocalyptic scenarios in Driver's Ed, sorry."

"Yeah, yeah; some excuse that i— _oi_!" You swerve to turn a sharp left but suddenly you're hitting the breaks again because _holy fucking shit_.

The entire street is blocked off, jam-packed with Infected spilling across the pavement and climbing buildings, clawing and biting and slashing at one another just to get closer to whatever it is the commotion is all about. They're swarming, you realize—but not at you, although you do suddenly become the target of more interest than you'd like the minute they start noticing you’re nearby. "There's no way that's normal." Against your better judgment, you put the car in park, and hope the glass windows and metal frame of the truck hold up against the dozen or so creatures now sprinting your way. But you can't plow through this—there are too many—and if you try to run you'll just end up leading a wild goose chase around town until you run out of fuel. You’re trapped.

"No shit, Sherlock. Somethin's goin' down."

"You think it's them?" But even as you say it, you're already scrambling for your phone. At the very least, you have to warn the others, and you can't help but hope there's a slim chance the hub in your car will pick up anyone else who's nearby. The truck rocks again, and wow. Wow. Shit. You’re pretty much surrounded.

Meenah fidgets, glancing out the back window again. "They're gonna start rippin' into our supplies soon if we don't do somethin'."

"I know, I know—just give me two minutes."

Another shake.

"We might not _have_ two minutes."

You don't respond, because you're too busy tapping out a message to Nepeta about the mess. You have two options—get the hell out of dodge and risk losing your friends because you won't be able to stop with this many Infected on your tail; or stay and fight. Neither option seems particularly pleasant or practical, but you know the other group is going to vouch for option t—

Suddenly, your phone beeps, and a new chat window pops up. And you want to shout and laugh because _yes, yes, yes_ someone else is nearby. They’re here. They’re alive.

— arachnidsGrip [AG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 15:54 — 

AG: Hey, John!

AG: I just wanted to let you know that we probably won't 8e seeing each other.

AG: Some stuff came up and I think we're all pro8a8ly going to die soon.

AG: 8ut that's okay! It was pretty cool to talk to someone who isn't a total loser these past few weeks.

EB: vriska, where are you??

EB: dave told us what happened and we're in the town i think you're in!!!

AG: Oh, man. Oh, shit.

AG: That’s just gr8. Guess I owe Strider for that one, too. He keeps saving our asses even after he's dead.

EB: not the time! where are you so we can make sure you don't actually die?

EB: also dave is not dead, because he's not allowed to be.

AG: Geez, okay!!!!!!!! We're in a gym or something.

EB: laramie middle school gymnasium?

AG: Yeah, that sounds right! How did you know?

"Oh my God, they're inside," you say, and point to the building at the center of the chaos. It’s covered—totally covered. 

"Well, guess we don't have much of a choice, then. We gonna wait for backup or we gonna bust in, guns blazin'?"

You bounce in your seat, impatient because you’re _so close_ but totally aware that you’ll get yourselves killed if you head out on your own. "We'll be able to actually help if the others are here, which they should be soon. Try to get in touch with someone to tell them what's going on—I think I left Nepeta hanging without an answer."

"You got it, fearless leader."

"Don't call me that."

EB: i'm right outside, i think. but i can't come in.

EB: you're in a pretty bad spot.

AG: You don't think I don't know that?

AG: Get your ass in here as soon as you can, John! You are a doctor and we need a doctor!!!!!!!!

EB: who else is hurt?? dave mentioned something about terezi.

AG: Pyrope hasn't moved since we got here, and the mini Strider went down a couple of hours ago 8ecause he was stupid enough to get himself hurt without telling us.

AG: I don't know how much time we have left 8efore Pyrope wakes up and kills us all, though.

A car horn blares, and you look up in time to see a familiar black SUV careening your way from the other side of the street. Infected scatter, some heading for the car while others scramble away, back toward the middle school. Most have moved away from the entrance, now, and they're focused on the eight of you. Good.

EB: we're coming.

— ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering arachnidsGrip [AG] at 16:09 — 

The car pulls up beside you to a screeching halt, and you can see your cousin behind the wheel. Nepeta starts motioning to you through the passenger side window, but Meenah is already one step ahead of you, rechecking her weapon straps and preparing for some kind of grand entrance into battle. Your sledgehammer is at her feet, but she can't lift it high enough to hand it to you so you reach over and maneuver it, yourself. With one hand. You think you hear her mutter something about Donkey Kong under her breath, but you aren't really paying attention.

There's another flurry of motion through the glass, and you sign back as much as you can. "You ready?" you ask your partner, and she grins in a way that would be mildly unsettling in any other situation.

"Let's go kick some ass."

Moments later, all four doors on the SUV fly open, and blood starts spattering through the air like a sick sprinkler's trail.

* * *

You don't have time for much more than a few shouted greetings before the handle of your hammer is cracking against the skull of a monster coming at you from the left. It goes down with a hard _thud_ , but you don't have time to appreciate your first field kill in over a year because before you can blink two more appear in your line of sight. Gunfire starts up almost immediately, and you see Eridan and Jade clambering onto the roof of your truck for a better vantage point and access to extra ammunition. They take out six more.

Swing _, crunch._

Another one falls at your feet, but you're long gone by the time it hits the pavement, already running back toward the truck for your bag.

"Cover me! I have to get inside!" you yell to no one in particular, and you spot Tavros just in time to see him impale a grey body through the neck with his short-handled spear. Good, you think—he's holding his own. But you'll need him, too. "Tav!"

You don't even bother unhooking the straps tying your duffle to the truck bed—you just yank them out and keep moving. But the action leaves you with one hand on your hammer; for less than a second, you're defenseless, and that's all the time the creatures around you need. You're stationary, and suddenly three Infected are right there at your back.

They go down in a hail of bullets and arrows.

"Don't just stand there, dumbass! _Go_!" Jade calls from above, and rather than respond you just start running. Horuss falls in step beside you, crossbow clearing your path, and you hear him call out to Tavros just as you approach the main body of the swarm. They're still blocking your path to the door, so you focus on taking out as many as you can before setting your sights on the last barrier between you and your friends. Readjusting your bag so you've got two hands back on your hammer, you set to work. Meenah and Nepeta dive into the chaos not long after, one bashing heads in with a metal bo staff and the other hard at work shredding everything nearby with a set of knives sewn into her gloves. You don't know how much longer you fight, but soon the five of you have a sizable pile of blood and flesh and limbs under your feet, and the uneven ground makes steady footing a tricky thing to keep.

In the surge of panic, most of Infected have moved away from the double doors—now scratched and bent and dented—so you seize the opportunity and call for cover a second time, knocking out two monsters still in your way. Then you swing, swing, _swing_ against the metal, pounding your sledgehammer into with everything you've got until your arms burn and you think you might have given yourself a stress fracture in your wrist. But you don't stop. You don't stop 'til the metal bends and the hinges crack open enough for you to slip inside. Tavros is on your heels before you have the chance to yell for him, and just as he ducks in behind you slam all of your weight back against the door to seal the twisted slab shut as best you can.

"Holy motherfuckin' shit," someone calls, and then a second voice starts yelling your name.

The room is massive and pristine, like it hasn't been touched in years, and the rainbow-paint-dotted linoleum flooring is lined with collapsible bleachers, racks of sports equipment, and stacks of foam exercise padding. Off in one corner, there's the glass face of what must be some kind of office, and standing directly outside the door is a tall, lanky young man with wild hair and a neon juggling club in each hand. He's poised for defense, but as soon as a blonde woman starts shoving him out of the doorway he sways to the side and steps away.

"John, is that you?" she calls, and that gets your feet moving again.

"Vriska? Oh my God, are you guys okay?"

"No, we just—" suddenly, a snarl you're all too familiar with erupts from the office, and Vriska starts cursing up a storm because, "Oh my God, she's awake. She's awake."

You’re surprised to find you aren’t as freaked out as you thought you would be—but then it occurs to you that you’ve dealt with this a hundred times before. So you just move.

You sprint into the office just as the wooden splinters of what once might have been a desk start flying your way. You duck, pulling Tavros down with you, but you've barely caught your bearings before something tackles you from the front, growling and hissing. She goes for your neck, but you're quick to pin her arms and flip her under you—because she's weak, body still fighting a battle in her brain and blood.

Back when you'd first started talking to Dave and the others, you'd made sure to record all the medical information they’d been willing to give you, just in case something went wrong. Something like this. So you don't hesitate to start barking orders at Tavros, telling him to prep a transfusion bag. A sedative isn’t something you’re about to waste your time with because anything you pump into her system now will just pour out when you bleed her, so you settle in to keep her down with brute force.

"How are you going to—we don't even know if we have a match!" Tavros frets, but he keeps moving.

"Yeah, we do." You nod your head toward Vriska, who's now watching the two of you work from the doorway with the man you can only assume is Gamzee at her side, and she tugs at her hair as you start explaining the situation to her. She agrees faster than you thought she would, and soon Tavros is tying off her arm as you struggle to keep the fighting Terezi trapped under you. She’s not strong, but she’s small and sharp—and you don’t want to hurt her more than she’s already hurting herself.

An eternity passes before she stops thrashing enough for you to climb off her, and you let Gamzee take over holding her down. Your priorities shift, because you’ve yet to even _see_ Dirk. Glancing at your phone, you take note of the fact that you've already been inside the building for over an hour, and you wonder if the others are alright, too. And oh, God—Dave. He’s still somewhere out there.

When you ask, Vriska half-hazardly points you to the back of the office, and you crawl over the splintered desk to see two stacks of foam mats propped up like beds tucked against one of the walls. You figure Terezi had been on one of them before her outburst, because the foam is shredded and soaked black. But there's still a boy lying flat in the second, and he isn't at all what you were expecting.

Given the amount of time since his exposure to the Infection, you should be staring face-to-face with grey skin and dark hair and convulsions and everything that _isn't_ in front of you but _is_ behind you. Immediately, you start to panic—because the only things that don't turn after exposure are corpses. But his chest is heaving. It's heaving and his heart is racing and he's sweating and shivering and _holy shit_ his fever must be at least a hundred at three. Probably higher.

"Vriska!" you call, pulling off your blood-soaked gloves and tugging at his clothes, trying to find the injuries staining his white shirt red. "When did Dirk collapse?"

After a moment Gamzee answers instead, so you figure she must have passed out. Shit. "The little dude keeled over just after we locked our good selves in this motherfuckin' safe house, before the sun started speakin' miracles to us from the horizon." There's a wrap of what looks like gauze from a first aid kid pulled tight over Dirk's chest, and it doesn't take you long to figure out that the wound you're looking for is on his back. Carefully, you lift him up, turning him over so you can have better access to the problem, and it takes you a second to realize Gamzee is still speaking. "We thought he was just worn out from the whole trip and everythin', 'cause he didn't start shadowing over like our blind sister. But he ain't supposed to be motherfuckin' lookin' like that, so I think there might be somethin' else wrong underneath that skin of his."

You start carefully cutting the bandages away, trying to be as gentle as you can because the pressure of lying on his back fused the fabric to his clotting blood. Which could cause problems down the line. Compared to what you’ve seen in the past, though, he looks almost… normal. "What do you mean?"

"Well, for one thing, mini-Strider had them choco-eyes yesterday, but that ain't so much the case anymore." You aren't sure what he's getting at, so you focus on the task at hand and set to work disinfecting the claw marks you can now see scraped across the kid's back. He whines as alcohol and blood drip down around him, but he doesn't wake up. There isn't any black that you can see—not aside from the mess pooled all around you from what has to have been Terezi—so you kick yourself for jumping to conclusions and set to work.

Halfway through stitching him up, the thunder pounding footsteps slams into your ears, and immediately you see Gamzee get to his feet by the door. Your hammer is nearby enough that you can reach it if you need to, but Terezi and Vriska and Tavros are still too close to the office entrance to—

"Guys!"

"Jade!" Your cousin bursts into the room just as Gamzee stumbles out of the way, followed closely by Meenah and Eridan. "What happened? Is everyone alright?" you call, stretching to see over the debris.

She's out of breath, but her semi-automatic is strapped to her back and not in her hands. You take that as a good sign. "We're doing fine, what about—Oh my _God_ , is she okay?"

Tavros speaks up in reply, because you can’t really tell if she’s talking about Terezi or Vriska—or both. "Yeah, they'll be fine. We kind of got lucky in coming when we did, which is good, so I think everyone is going to make it out of this alive."

"What about Dirk?"

"He's stable," you call back, but with the relief of a closing fight and safe companions comes a second wave of worry. Because there’s still one more person you have to find. "Tav, when you’re done, give me a hand over here." Things must be going better than you’d hoped, because within seconds he's at your side. Carefully, you hand him the needle still tugging at the skin on Dirk’s back. "Once you get him finished up, start giving him low doses of crushed ibuprofen every four hours to keep his fever down. Keep him steady, don't pull on his stitches. I know you've done this before."

He nods stiffly and sets to work as you stand and start stuffing things back in your duffle, slipping your gloves back along the way. Tavros has his own supplies with him, so you replace what you used from your own bag with pieces of his as the others watch on. Terezi and Vriska are side-by-side on the floor, both unconscious but calm, and you know things will work out alright on this end.

Just before you head back out to the door, you tell Jade to move them to the SUV when she thinks is safe, and motion for Meenah to follow. Eridan is the only one that questions it. "And w-where are you goin'?"

"We still need to find Dave. Sollux gave us his last location, and I'm not leaving him out there by himself."

"He's probably dead, you know-w."

You glare at him hard through your glasses, "I'm gonna be the one who decides that."

* * *

Once outside, you see that the fight is almost entirely one-sided. Nepeta, Equius, and Horuss are making quick work of the Infected left standing, so you spare one last wave in their direction and make a beeline back for the truck. Minutes later, you're peeling through town as Meenah barks directions to you, leaving the city for the highway. According to Sollux, the wireless router Dave kept with their supplies is still broadcasting from just a few miles outside the border, so it takes you less time than you thought to pull up as close to the signal as the road will allow. The keys are barely out of the ignition before you're scrambling out of the driver’s seat, bag on your shoulder.

"Hold up, kid! This was a dead zone last night—there's no tellin' what's left in there," Meenah clambers around to you, weapons already in hand like she's prepared for a fight.

"It's early enough in the afternoon that whatever might have been out has moved on—“

“Were you even payin’ attention back there? Theory disproven.”

“—and if there _are_ things still crawling through the woods, we're just wasting time better spent helping Dave," you shoot back, and you start pushing through the trees without waiting for an answer. She grumbles something at you but doesn't complain, so you focus on following the directions and block out the world around you. If something happens, she has your back.

Fifteen minutes later, you smell it before you see it. That's how you know you're getting close.

"Holy shit, it's like a fuckin' sewer."

"Whatever bodies are nearby have been sitting out under the sun for almost sixteen hours. Predators or not, there's going to be some early-onset decomposition."

"How the hell are you so calm about all this? It's creepy."

You snort and shake your head, giving her a shaky laugh. Calm? She thinks you’re calm? You’re not sure whether you should be worried or flattered. "I'm used to it, I guess. We had some pretty rough times early on, back before we met Rose."

"Glad I wasn't around for that."

You start to respond, two steps later you're breaking through the trees into a clearing and _shit, shit, fuck_.

There are bodies and limbs everywhere, hacked up and half-whole and in every kind of horrible shape imaginable, all plastered across the ground like some kind of sick shag carpeting. Everything is grey, black, grey—and immediately your brain goes into overdrive because _where is Dave_? You scramble forward, picking your way through the mess, searching, searching, searching for something you aren’t even sure how to find. What was he wearing? What did he look like? You have no idea—and for all you know he could be buried seamless underneath your feet, another monstrous face that might have once been human. You trip, stumble, clamber—trying to be careful but racing against the ticking countdown in your head.

And then your heart stops.

Because there’s something crumpled in the sea of monochrome that’s brighter than everything else, a nickel on wet pavement that lights up when a car’s headlights pass. His clothes are soaked black, black, black but his skin is still pale as a ghost, like a beacon you almost miss. Oh, God—it’s so pale. It’s _too fucking pale_.

"Dave!" you shout, even though you know he can't hear you. There's no way he couldn't have been Infected, covered in so much blood and gore. He should look just like Terezi. Just like the things scattered everywhere around you.

Meenah says something, but you don't hear her because you're too busy kneeling in the mess beside Dave. And oh, God. He's just as torn up as the things underfoot. His clothes and skin are in shreds, and there's a gaping hole in his side that's still soft and damp, shining in the sunlight. The kind of wound people don't get back up from after a few days. His phone is still in his hand, screen cracked and caked and dead. And no, _no_. This isn't okay. This is why you don't get involved with Approachers. Because you're too fucking soft—you get too attached. And—fuck—you don't want to think about how happy you've been these past few weeks. 

It isn't fair. Shit, it isn't fair.

You hear Meenah sigh, then there’s a hand on your shoulder. "Sorry, kid. I know he was your friend."

For a while, you don’t say anything, and she doesn't try to make you talk. You just sit there, watching, and she stands off to the side to give you some space. You're a doctor—you've seen plenty of death and tragedy, but that doesn't change the fact that it _hurts_.

When your phone finally buzzes—probably the others wondering where you are, if you're alright—you finally sit up and take note of everything in the clearing. You'll have to build a pyre, and the afternoon is ticking away too fast to move Dave's body somewhere else before you burn it. _Oh, God—you’ll have to burn it_. You tell Meenah as much, and send a message to Tavros asking how everyone is doing. They’re all still unconscious, he says, and you think that's probably for the best. So you tell him to pack up whenever he's ready and head back to base.

After that, you figure you've spent enough time sitting around. Grieving always comes later, when you’re alone at night and you have the time and space and solitude to let your emotions get the better of your head. Dave's body is draped across his group's supplies, so you gently lift him up from underneath, hoping to reach one of the blankets still wrapped up by their bags. A shroud. When your hand comes in contact with something lodged in his back, though, even you can't hold back the exclamation of disgusted surprise. Shit. That had to have been excruciating.

Stepping away from the muck, you lay him in the grass a few feet to the side, and he looks so damn tense and frowning and _uneven_ that it makes your heart kind of hurt for some reason. He must have died in so much pain.

Without thinking, you kneel down next to him again and gently smooth a hand over his face, trying to work out some of the creases there. You'll cover him soon, but you're selfish enough not to want your first and last mental image of him to be so distorted. So horrible. You press on his temples and his cheeks and his forehead, and before you realize that you’re doing your fingers are slipping down to his neck out of habit, and checking for the pulse you know won't be there. You've looked over enough dead bodies to know when someone—

 _Fuck_.

Suddenly, you're forcing your fingers down harder, holding your own breath just in case your head is screwing with you and you’ve gone off fucking deep end. Because there's no way—there's no fucking way he could be alive. There's no fucking way.

But it's there.

Your brain kicks into overdrive, and immediately you start cataloguing the damage to his body. It should be impossible for someone to survive the injuries he has, but that's up to you, now—that's your job. To make sure he does. Because holy shit. He's _alive_.

When Meenah breaks through the trees sometime later to tell you the pyre's been all set up, she finds you stitching up the wounds on a half-stripped Dave. The hole in his side is the worst of it all, but you do what you can with the resources you have and hope the car ride doesn't jostle the spot open again. Most of the blood flow has stopped, but after sitting out for so long a wound that large is just begging for infection. The normal kind, but still really fucking deadly. You decide to leave the hand lodged in his back for now—you'll have to carefully remove it when you get to base, and you can't risk any more blood loss.

You don't dwell on the fact that he's still half-coated in black, congealed slop, because the important thing is that he _isn't dead_. Not yet. And you intend to keep him that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go, John. Save the hot boy's life. We have faith in you.
> 
> But in all seriousness, I'm sorry for this chapter! It wasn't my best. Thanks for sticking with me guys! You're all really, really fantastic. Gosh. <3
> 
> As always, feel free to say hi on my blog! (egbertiian on tumblr) I'm pretty much always lurking around, so don't be shy!
> 
> And a super awesome thank you to jackfrostitution on tumblr for beta reading and just generally being an amazing friend!
> 
>  **EDIT** davestridersbottombitch on tumblr drew some fanart for a Dave's scene in the last chapter and I'm freaking out and _oh my gosh_. [You can check it out here!](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/67813090523/davestridersbottombitch-said-you-let-yourself)


	9. Return Intermezzo

**  
[5/24/37]**

**== > BE THE EXHAUSTED WEAPONS EXPERT**

You've walked by these same trees a hundred times, but you never thought _driving_ a route you know that well could be so _hard_. It's been almost eight hours since you left Laramie, and you've long since passed out of unfamiliar territory. In fact, with each dilapidated mile marker you inch closer and closer to home. But when you're on your feet, you can feel the curve of the ground and navigate through the map of the underbrush. The woodland floor feels like home, but this? Blasting across concrete faster than you can blink? It's unfamiliar after all these years. And _boring_.

Your name is JADE HARLEY, and you think offering to stay behind the wheel the whole drive back to base was probably the DUMBEST THING EVER, and you're really started to regret it. It's nearly four am, and you haven't slept in something like twenty-four hours. Although you know that's better than most of your team—you were the only one who managed to nap on the drive down, after all—you're still really, _really_ tired.

Now, you're the only one awake in a big black death trap full of exhausted young adults, and the silence isn't helping at all.

In the rear view mirror, you can see Tavros slumped over in the third seat, arm resting on the back windowsill and Dirk's head propped up in his lap. Mini-Strider hasn't woken up once, and any attempts to shuffle him upright into a seat were met with violent protests on the part of your cousin's little apprentice. Bending his back too could pull out the stitches, Tavros had said, so after more arguing than necessary the two of them had staked a claim to the whole row, leaving the rest of your passengers to squeeze in what was already tight spacing.

Horuss and Equius had volunteered to sit in the back with what's left of your supplies, and you can just make out the tops of their heads over the back seats. Nepeta had insisted on curling up with the younger Zahhak, too, and even though you can't see her you know she's just as passed out as everyone else.

Gamzee is wedged long-ways on the floor at Tavros's feet, all crumpled limbs and baggy clothes and messy hair. You think it's probably good that Tavros kept him close by, because John's warnings from weeks ago about withdrawal are still fresh in your mind. You don't know how long it's been since the kid had his last fix, and you aren't sure anyone else would know what to do if something happened.

Vriska and Terezi are in the two seats behind you, both strapped in but still down for the count. Vriska has woken up a few hours into the trip and had a minor panic attack (it was completely understandable, you decided; if you'd been the one to wake up in a moving car surrounded by unfamiliar faces, you'd probably got a little nuts, too) but everything had calmed down after you'd talked everything over. She'd fallen back asleep soon after, completely exhausted and still more than a little woozy. 

That had left Eridan up front with you in the passenger seat, and the two of you had bickered like five year olds until Horuss had shouted at you both to _shut up_ because you were giving him more of a headache than he already had. You'd mostly ignored him, though, right up until Meenah had started pestering Nepeta, and you all went quiet as you listened to her read the conversation out loud in real time.

According to Meenah, she and John were fine—there hadn't been anything live left at Dave's last location. The same couldn't be said for Dave himself, though. John had done his best to fix him up on-site, but apparently the older Strider was in bad enough shape that she didn't think he would make it back to base. He was barely hanging on—and _barely_ was apparently something of an overstatement.

You'd all gotten pretty quiet after that, and it was right about then that everyone else had started to doze off.

Now, you're stuck squinting out at the pitch black, uneven roads by yourself as you try to navigate back to the University at a roaring ninety-five miles an hour. You've got two ticks on the gas gauge left before you start running in the red, and no real way to tell how far you have left to go. All you know is that you're heading in the right direction, and that you should be there soon. You're getting down to the wire, and the school's turn-off sign has long-since succumbed to nature. Your makeshift replacement isn't reflective in the least, so you've got no easy way of seeing it in the dark.

After a few moments of deliberation (do you really want to deal with him, or should you just let him sleep?), you reach over and swat in Eridan's general direction. Your hand hits skin, so you think you might have made contact with his face—but you don't have time to enjoy it before he lets out an unnecessarily loud, " _Ow-w!_ W-What the fuckin' _hell_ , Harley?" and you immediately start shushing him. There's no point in dragging the _rest_ of your teammates out of a much-needed rest.

"Shut _up_ ," you whisper, glaring at him out of the corner of your eye. You don't think he sees it, but it's the thought that counts. "I need you to do me a favor, okay? And by a favor I mean you have no choice and you actually have to do it without whining like a baby." He snorts and huffs and makes all kinds of indignant noises, but doesn't say anything. Good. You _are_ his boss, after all. "Pull up the map and figure out how close we are."

"You got us lost?"

" _No_. We're _not_ lost. It's, like, a preemptive prevention step to avoid that thing exactly."

He snorts, but after a few moments of shuffling around and way more grumbling than necessary your unintentional co-pilot eventually gets hold of his phone and pulls Sollux up on the other end. Your wireless hub isn't strong enough to maintain a steady enough signal for the GPS page itself, so you have to go through a middle man to see what's you should be on the lookout for and when. It isn't too bad, though, because you get the information you need and Eridan has someone else to bother for the rest of the trip. He manages to keep quiet without staying totally dead-silent in a car full of sleeping people, and even though you'll never, never, _never_ tell him so you're kind of a little bit grateful.

As it turns out, you're less than an hour away from where you need to be, and in comparison with the last hundred years you've spent on the road the next forty-or-so minutes pass relatively quickly. Sure, you're left alone with your thoughts again, but the fact that there's actually an end in sight helps at least a little. Soon, you're pulling up onto the Skaian University main road, and you bark out a relieved wake-up call to your passengers. You're met with a lot of tired grumbling, but for the most part everyone seems just as happy as you that it's all finally over.

Before the car even stops moving, you see two figures sprint up to the parking lot's edge, one dragging the other helplessly by the arm. You don't have to guess who the first one is—Karkat's ears would have picked up the sound of your car engine before you even left the main road, so you had no doubt he'd be the first of your welcome home party to track you down. Nepeta perks up and scrambles over the Zahhaks as soon as he's in view of the back window, all the while completely ignoring their yelps of protest as she starts pressing her face against the glass. She's still half asleep, but happy to see him nonetheless.

The minute you've got the car stalled, you press the button to open up the back so she can get out without crushing anyone else, and Tavros mouths a relieved _thank you_ in the rearview mirror.

Soon, you're folding yourself out onto the pavement, a little bent over but otherwise relatively balanced. Hiking four dozen miles in a day? No problem. Sitting in the same position for eight hours? A little less exciting—and you think easily three times as painful. It takes you a second to get your bearings, hands steadying yourself on the driver's seat that's nearly to your chest now that you're on the ground, and you're so focused on getting the feeling back into your feet you almost miss the voice calling your name.

When you finally turn around you're met with a face full of Jake, and you barely get the chance to breathe before he's scooping you up in a bone-crushing hug. Ugh, it's _so_ not fair that he's taller than you. He's only sixteen—there should be some kind of natural law against it, even if he _is_ a guy. Stupid Y chromosome. Stupid male hormones.

He's already babbling on about how he's glad _you're_ alright and how he's glad everyone _else_ is alright and how he's _still_ mad at you but it just doesn't count right now because he's just _really_ glad you're okay and—

You shove and squirm until you're out of his grip, and gasp for the sweet, sweet taste of fresh air just in time to see Nepeta lift Karkat up and swing him around as he clings to her, begging for his life.

" _No_ , Nepeta! Put me _down!_ We _talked_ about this—Jesus fucking _Christ!_ "

You don't even bother resisting the urge to laugh in his face.

The moment ends, though, when you hear Tavros call for help and realize he's still trapped inside the car, surrounded by the dead weight of at least three unconscious teenagers. You don't remember seeing Gamzee get up, but you're pretty sure Vriska is awake. Whether she has enough energy to stand up, though, is a different story. Massive blood loss isn't something a person bounces back from in a few hours—you know that from experience.

Equius and Horuss make their way around from behind the car, then, and before anyone has a chance to escape you shrug Jake's arms off you and start handing out jobs. You might be home, but the mission isn't over until everything's been completely squared away.

"You two, help get Terezi and Dirk and whoever else to the infirmary. And Vriska. And Gamzee. Actually, Jake—you should help, too." You hear a few sighs, but no one argues. Jake, at least, nods with _some_ enthusiasm. Sudddenly, you kind of really hope Dirk isn't in as bad a shape as he looks, if only for your cousin's sake. The kid needs a few friends his age who aren't, you know, family. "Eridan, you and Nepeta help me get some of these boxes back to storage before we all lose steam and start falling over." 

Despite all the sleep everyone got in the car, you know no one is well rested. If anything, everyone looks even more worse for wear than before, and the last thing you need is to learn that someone had fallen asleep in the shower and taken up a day's worth of hot water in one sitting. You're all still covered in sweat and dirt and who knows what else from your brawl in the city streets, and as much as you're used to a less-than-perfectly-hygienic living environment you know no one is going to want to get in a bed roll stiff and sticky with _that_ mess. 

It takes a bit of coaxing to get Vriska out and walking, but by the time they make it out of your sight Tavros has ended up supporting most of her weight anyway. Progress is slow even though Equius, Horuss, and Jake all have a handle on Terezi, Gamzee, and Dirk, but eventually Tavros disappears in the distance, leading his half-unconscious entourage in the general direction of the infirmary. Without John, you know he'll have his hands full, but he's done well enough so far on his own. You figure he'll be alright. Even so, you hope Kankri's at least still waiting behind in the building where you left him. At least then he'll have an extra set of hands to work with. The boys you sent him off with aren't really known for their gentle touch.

Meanwhile, Karkat does his best to keep the growing crowd of spectators at bay. You knew you couldn't keep your impromptu mission a secret for long, and if Karkat could hear your approach there's no way the other members of his camp—the other Cured—didn't. There's a good chance they heard you leave, too. You don't see any of the others, though, so you figure everyone else must still be asleep. It's a little early for anyone without nocturnal tendencies to be awake, anyway, and you're grateful that that means you have less people to deal with.

For the most part, you ignore it all and let Karkat handle the situation. It's not really your place to, anyway.

You've never paid much attention to the whole _them versus us_ campaign some people keep insisting is a thing, because as head of security it's your job to protect _everyone_. You kind of think the whole divide is stupid, really, but you've long-since given up arguing about it. All you can do is respect the hierarchy and do your job, because you've learned from experience that fear is a natural instinct, not a learned one. It's almost impossible to break.

Moving the supplies back to the storage rooms takes twice as long as it should, because every trip back and forth is a battle with the crowd. They do part to let you through, though, and you think that might have something to do with the fact that you all look like hell. For anyone not used to the direct aftermath of a trip out into the field it's a less-than-pleasant sight. Actually, you think it sucks even if you _are_ used to it, but the point is that it's probably twice as frightening to an outsider. People are morbidly curious creatures, though, so you're still bombarded with equal parts rapid-fire questioning and silent stares. You're not sure which is more unnerving.

Karkat promises to hold a camp-wide meeting and let everyone know the situation, but he keeps stressing that the mission wasn't a big deal. That it wasn't anything special—just a routine pickup with a little added mess—so please wait a few a few days. (His language is a little more colorful, of course, but you're kind of too focused on getting the task at hand finished so you can take a nap to really keep track of the exact wording.)

By the time you've got a tarp back over the SUV and you're ready to hit the showers, the sun is starting to rise and people have started moving back to their tents. If you're quick, you think you might be able to make it back to the cafeteria in time to catch Jane and Rose switch shifts with Feferi. They'll be getting ready to start breakfast just as Feferi finishes cleaning up after dinner, so you might be able to sneak an early meal before you crash. And if you're fast enough, you won't have to deal with the crowds.

You send Eridan off and help Karkat and Nepeta shuffle everyone else back in the general direction of the Cured campground, and turn back around to head home, yourself.

The old blanket-stuffed administration building has essentially returned to its main function as the indoor entertainment building—or as much of an entertainment building as you can have these days—now that the winter dorm overflow has moved back outside to their seasonal tents. While Karkat and his isolated group have a permanent outdoor setup on the south side of the campus, the rest of you aren't so lucky. You've had to make do with the room you have and improvise the rest.

To save space, everyone willing is paired up with a roommate. You and Jake have been stuck together since before the very beginning, so naturally he was the best choice for you. The two of you had been living in the same space on and off for years already, so the change wasn't as drastic as it was for some people. Meenah and Cronus had been a different story, unwilling to room with anyone else and thereby essentially stuck together after it had been explained that they couldn't stay with their respective siblings because of the camp divide. You owe the fact that they haven't killed each other largely to Meenah's almost permanent residence out in the field with Nepeta and the scouting team, you think.

Suddenly, you wonder where she and John are. You haven't heard from them in hours, and hope everything is alright. You decide right then and there that you're going to pull Rose aside about a markeryard service when you go sniff out food after your shower, because you know your cousin well enough to realize that he's not going to want to deal with it. You wonder if Dave's already passed, or if he'll hang on until later tonight, when he's warm and safe and relaxed in the infirmary. You hope he's not in too much pain.

By the time you reach your shared tent, you've made yourself thoroughly sad and are fully prepared to argue some more with Jake if only to get your mind off it. You'd rather be angry than sad—you can shoot things and punch people when you're mad, but when all you want to do is curl up and cry you don't have anything to tear to shreds but yourself. It's not a pleasant feeling, so you've learned to redirect it.

When you pull back the flap, though, you see immediately that he isn't there. Your room is empty, when you'd expected him to already be splayed out and snoring across his makeshift mattress totally passed out post-shower. No wait, that's what _you_ wish you were doing. Wow, you're really tired. Now that you think about it, you're not really sure why you expected him to be here—if anything, he's probably already made his way back toward the cafeteria for food.

Even so, you _do_ feel bad for blowing him off after he'd been dragged _all_ the way by Karkat to see you and the others (you make a mental note to get the story of _that_ meeting out of him later) so you decide to track him down after your shower and maybe apologize for your argument the day you left. _Maybe_. You were totally justified in not wanting him out in the field with you! You know you were. Even if you hadn't told him the whole story, he should have understood that you had your reasons. Ugh, he could be _so_ frustrating sometimes!

You aggressively stuff a change of clothes in your shower bag and decide to get your team's laundry pushed up to the front of the cleaning queue (again) before heading back out. You've learned from experience that Infected blood stains and you really don't like having to walk around in black splotch-smeared pants. New threads are hard to come by these days, so most of what you wear is already pretty worn and patched up. The last thing you need is to look like you just came back from a mission _all_ of the time.

The sun's almost completely risen now, and you can already see a few half-awake refugees stumbling out of their tents toward one of two places—the showers or the cafeteria. You get a few waves as you pass by, but for the most part the two or three people who pass are too cold and groggy to register that you look like a wreck. You wonder, then, if only Karkat's camp new about the mission. On a normal basis, the two groups don't mix, with the few notable exceptions being anyone on a team. You doubt there would have been an opportunity to spill the beans while you were out, but now you suppose it doesn't matter. If Karkat has decided to hold a meeting, John will have to, too, just so no one gets their nonexistent feathers all ruffled and bunched.

"Miss Jade!" It takes a second for you to realize someone's calling your name, because you suddenly feel like you've hit the wall and all you want to do is take a nice hot shower and not think about things—which you can only do if you get there _first_. By the time the sound _does_ register, though, the little man is already frantically waving and skip-jog-run-whatever-ing in your direction. "Miss Jade, Miss Jade, Miss Jade!"

"G'morning, Mr. Deuce!" you say as cheerily as you can, because even on your worst days you've always found it hard to be upset with the happiest, least-threatening mobster you've ever met. (Not that you've made a point to meet many, of course. But, you know, life happens.) Of course, none of the four middle-aged mafiosos you picked up from Portland early on are... normal. You're kind of glad, though. You think sharing your shelter with a GODFATHER REINCARNATED X4 COMBO would have been really nerve-wracking.

He tips his ratty, hole-filled-but-well-loved hat at you and beams. "It's nice to have you back home again! We all got real worried when Mr. Jake didn't show up to change the guard shift this mornin', and started wonderin' if somethin' had happened. But I guess seein' you was reason enough to miss it!"

You blink, then, and—oh, shit. You'd completely forgot about the sunrise perimeter security rotation. Whoops. You'd assumed Jake would take care of it because you'd only just gotten back, and the fact that he didn't is both frustrating and a little bit worrying. You decide, then, to swing by the infirmary before you do anything else to see if anyone there knows where he might have gone after helping Tavros shuffle around the newest members of your little safe-haven.

"M'hmm!" You nod, still smiling even though your mind is already half a mile away. "It's _really_ great to be back. But, you know, I'm _really_ tired and I think maybe we should catch up sometime when I'm not about to fall over, is that alright?"

He blinks at you, before nodding frantically and tipping his hat again for good measure. "Oh, yes, yes, yes—of course! I'm real sorry for holdin' you up!" Deuce waves you on, and you grin back as you start inching away in the general direction of the infirmary. You doubt Jake would have stayed there long—he's always been adverse to the place for some reason—but that's where you'd sent him last. "It was nice seein' you, Miss Jade!"

"You too! Tell the others I'm sorry about this morning."

"Don't worry your head about it, Miss Jade!" he calls one last time, "Go rest up!"

Oh, but all you seem to _do_ these days is worry. It's a little frustrating, but you suppose it all comes with the territory. You've got a lot of people to look out for, after all.

Especially Jake.

With one last wave over your shoulder, you start heading toward John's building at a pace that wouldn't have any spectator mistaking you for _drunk-Dawn-of-the-Dead-makeup-artist_ tired or _oh-god-my-insides-are-eating-each-other-help_ hungry. You're a woman on a mission, whether you like it or not.

The minute you open the infirmary door, however, you immediately regret the whole thing.

From what you can see, things are in chaos.

John's office door—the first on the right—is closed, but every other room in the first-floor hall has been opened. You can't see Tavros, but you can hear his voice. He sounds like he's arguing with someone, maybe two people, though you can't quite tell who. You're too busy watching Kankri try to coax a wobbling Vriska back into one of the doorways—she looks angry and unsteady, and you're pretty sure that's not a good combination at all. Ever. Under any circumstance.

"I'm _fine_ , okay? I don't need your help—don't touch me. I don't even know who you are!" She's leaning up against the hallway wall, sending looks Kankri's way that could quite possibly kill him at any other place and time. It's the glare of a cornered animal, and you get the feeling things are just starting to get ugly.

"Now, to be quite fair, based on my understanding you've only had contact with a very limited number of people over the past few years, so that could be said for most of the people you're going to encounter in—Jade!"

(What _is_ it with everyone calling your name today? Really, letting the whole world know you're nearby _totally_ isn't necessary. _Really_.)

You sigh, slowly coming to the realization that _no_ , you won't be getting that hot shower anytime soon, and wave just as Vriska's head turns to look at you. "Vriska, you should _really_ be listening to Kankri. He might not be a medic or anything but he knows what he's talking about! And if Tav told you to do whatever he's trying to get you to do, then you should probably do it."

"But I don't _need_ more rest—I've been sleeping for, like, eight-hundred years! I feel fine!"

"Clearly, you're _not_ fine because from here it looks like you can barely even stand up on your own," you say, hiking your sadly-unneeded bag higher on your shoulder and crossing your arms. You start walking toward the pair, but Vriska starts backing up so you stop after only a few steps. Interesting. And definitely not good. "Second, what are you even planning to do? I can't imagine when the last time you had the chance to not worry about anything for a while, so—I don't know— _embrace_ it! You don't have to be anywhere or do anything. It'll probably be a day or so before we introduce you to everyone, and Tav isn't going to let you leave before John gets ba—"

" _Shit!"_ Suddenly, Tavros' voice rises up above everyone else's, followed immediately by the sounds of retching. Jake appears in the doorway just beyond Vriska and Kankri, looking a little green, and Tavros calls for Kankri's help inside.

The older Vantas brother shoots you a pitiful, pleading, borderline-pathetic look and you sigh again, resigned to staying just a little bit longer. You set your bag down just as he scurries around your cousin, and you start to approach Vriska again, who by now looks about ready to jump out of her skin. It's not hard to guess what's going through her head right now—she's weak and in an unfamiliar place surrounded by people she doesn't know. After six years spent fighting for her life every second, her survivor's instincts are bound to have kicked into a kind of hyperactive extreme. You've seen this kind of thing in refugees before—people who come from dangerous areas or smaller camps hit in the past. You rarely have to deal with it first-hand, though. That's not your realm of expertise—or anywhere near it, actually.

The closer you get, the more you can see inside the room Jake just had just escaped from. Just around the doorframe, Tavros is holding Gamzee's hair out of his face as heaves out his guts over a waste bin. There's a smallish pile of bile on the floor nearby that Kankri's busy wiping up, and _ew_. You can shoot a monster point-blank in the face with a semi-automatic, but you _don't_ do puking. And apparently Jake doesn't either.

Equius and Horuss are standing awkwardly in one corner of the room, unsure of what to do, and Dirk is laid out, still unconscious, on the only piece of furniture in the room—a small, makeshift mattress. Terezi is nowhere in sight, so you figure she must be sleeping somewhere nearby, in one of the other rooms.

Tavros looks up and fixes you all with the fiercest glare a scrawny, ninety-pounds-when-wet teenager can muster. "Somebody—I don't really care who—but somebody should move Dirk, uh, to another room. At least until we get this cleaned up. Um, thank you. Vriska, you should go to your room. And maybe try to sleep."

The Zahhaks, relieved to have some kind of job, set about moving the mattress and our cousin's friend out of the room and somewhere down the hall. You can't even really figure out why they're still here, to be honest. Maybe Tavros wouldn't let them leave. (You get the impression he can be very forceful when he wants to be).

You aren't really paying attention to where they take Dirk, though, because you're too busy keeping half your brain focused on Vriska and the other half on Jake. You turn back to Vriska—slowly but surely, your patience is wearing thin. "Look, you don't have to go to sleep or anything—hell, you don't even have to _rest_ for all I care. But at least go into the room and stay there until this whole mess dies down. You can leave the door open. You can open a window—it _really_ doesn't matter to me; whatever makes you comfortable. But I think we'll all feel better if we know you're safe, blah, blah, blah, and in a place where we can find you if we need to, and where you can't get lost, and where you can't hurt yourself if anything crazy happens." She looks angry for a moment, so you hold your hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. "Not that I'm saying anything will."

There's a moment where she eyes you skeptically, unsure, before she starts nodding slowly and you breathe a sigh of relief. Thank _God_ , ugh, maybe now you'll be able to sneak out of here.

Once she's shuffled inside another room nearby, you turn your attention back to Jake, who's still standing in the hallway looking a little lost and kind of sick. He's pointedly avoiding eye contact, though, so—yeah—you're pretty sure he's still mad at you. You're tempted to roll your eyes at him, but you figure that won't help the situation so you just settle for thinking about it really hard. Instead, you just sort of look at him really hard and say, "You feeling okay?"

"Yeah, just wonderful."

"You sure?"

"If I _wasn't_ sure, I wouldn't 've said it, yeah?"

Oh. Well.

You nod and hum a little bit to yourself, because suddenly you can pretty much _see_ the thick layer of awkward tension between the two of you.

Gamzee's fit has stopped and you can hear Tavros and Kankri talking in low voices, so the hall is mostly quiet now. This is your chance. You've seen Jake, and you don't really feel like starting an argument with him—you're not really needed. Finally, _finally_ you can get your shower.

You're ten free from the door when it slams open and John rushes in, calling for Tavros and as he runs past you with an unconscious man in his arms.

* * *

**== > KARKAT: USE PAPERWORK AS BONFIRE KINDLING**

As really goddamn _amazing_ as that sounds, you know you can't do that. You can think about it, though. And oh, the inferno is fucking _beautiful_.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you are currently holed up in your tent, hunched over a salvaged teacher's desk that's piled high with lists and formally-filed complaints and ration requests and a whole bunch of other stuff you really DON'T WANT to deal with. Your GIRLFRIEND is currently sprawled across your shared blanket pile, SLEEPING like the dead, completely oblivious to your bureaucratic struggles.

When you'd first set up your little establishment six years ago, things had been easier. There weren't too many of you, and you'd all defaulted to John for any problems that came up. Pretty much everything still goes through him, of course, but you've become some kind of middle man for anyone unwilling to talk to him directly. The paper trail was your idea—some small attempt to get a handle on the chaos—and to be honest most of your correspondence with John happens online. You like doing things with your hands, though. You like writing things down. It's easier for you to remember that way.

All you'd wanted was a relatively peaceful existence holed up in a lab looking at DNA for the rest of your life. You never asked for this. _Ugh._

You're halfway through figuring out what to do about a theft accusation when the sound of nearby footsteps catches your attention. They're loud and heavy, and even through the muffled layers of your animal fur tent walls you can hear them coming from farther away than you'd like.

Human footsteps.

You rarely get visitors from the other side of campus.

The sound pauses directly outside and you sigh, getting up to undo the ties holding the front of your tent shut while you (supposedly) sleep. You don't have any kind of alert system to let you know when someone's waiting, because you don't need one. Whoever's outside knows this, apparently, so that at least narrows down the list of people it could be.

You're more than a little surprised, though, when you finally get your tent flap open and see Kankri standing there, hands clasped behind his back and looking older than you remember last seeing him. He smiles a little and whispers a tired, "Hello, little brother," in some attempt not to disturb your sleeping neighbors, which you're grateful for.

You stand aside and let him come in, and as you make your way back over to your desk chair, you watch him look around as subtly as he can. Suddenly you can't remember how long it's been since he was last here. Or the last time you talked to him. Or the last time you'd seen him, really. John's birthday, maybe? And even then, you hadn't said more than a few words to each other.

You don't offer him a place to sit—you figure if he wants to, he can just put his ass down on the floor. Instead, you stare and wait for him to speak.

"John arrived home several hours ago."

"I know."

"You did not come by to see him."

"I was busy. I _am_ busy. Christ, Kankri—did you just come barging in to tell me something we both know I already knew?" You practically hiss, narrowing your eyes at him. He cringes, and nope. No fucking way. You're not in the mood to deal with this right now.

"No, I simply came to alert you of the fact—"

"That's a load of fucking hoofbeast-feces, and we both know it."

He goes quiet, then, and just stands there looking nervous and pitiful and tired. Nothing like the older brother you remember from when you were little. Nothing like the dark-haired superhero who'd held your hand as you hopped between foster homes. Nothing like the man who'd raised you from before he, himself, was anything close to a teenager.

You wonder not for the first time which one of you has changed—or if you've always been this disconnected and just never realized it.

There's a whine from your mattress, and Nepeta rolls over, cocooning up under your blankets. She's probably been awake since you let Kankri inside, but didn't say anything—she's been trying to get you to talk to him for months. "AC thinks her Vantas boys should stop arguing and address their problems and maybe hug," she says, muffled through layers of fabric. "Because if they don't she'll claw out both of their throats so she can sleep in peace."

Kankri swallows audibly, and you can't help but snort a cynical laugh at that. At the whole thing.

Wow, your life is really fucked up.

"Just go away, Kankri. You don't want to be here—hell, I can practically _smell_ how fucking terrified you are. It's been years. You've had _years_ to get over this bullshit and you _haven't_ , so just leave me alone." You're full-on glaring, now, and your brother won't meet your eyes. Nepeta makes another sad little noise from underneath the blankets and Kankri sighs. It's a strained sound, but he nods anyway.

"Regardless, you should pay John a visit when you get the chance. I have the distinct feeling he is in need of a friend right about now." He doesn't say anything else, and you watch as he leaves, not moving from your spot until you hear his footsteps fade away as he nears the border of your territory. Only then do you get up to tie the flaps of your tent back closed.

You're just settling back into your seat to finish what you had been working on when Nepeta heaves a huge, over-dramatic huff. "That's not what I _meant_ , you know." You roll your eyes, not looking up from the paragraph in front of you. "You have to forgive him at some point, Karkitty."

"There's nothing to forgive. He's just an arrogant, paranoid, prejudiced douchecanoe who can't see past everyone else's issues long enough to take a look at himself and see he has problems of his own."

"Awh, c'mon. That's not fair—he really does try! He's just not, you know, very good at it." Suddenly her arms snake around your shoulders and her chin rests on the top of your head, and you sigh. Again. "You know, when my sister and I used to fight—back before her accident—we'd get all our energy and frustration out by beating each other up. Like, wrestling! It was fun, and we got so exhausted that neither of us had the energy to be mad anymore and it was _great_."

"Yeah, because Kankri and I are _totally_ built for—fuck, what's that thing Jake says? Scrums. Because we're totally built for scrums and fisticuffs."

She giggles, and you can hear the noise vibrate in your skull. It's a pleasant buzzing, and you realize then then that you're probably not going to get anymore work done today. "You're so difficult sometimes, did you know that?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I can't help my sparkling personality."

"I'm _serious_ though. It's the thought that counts, right? I mean, he came all the way here just to talk to you. Don't you think that means something, even if it's just a little tiny thing?"

"No."

" _Karkat_."

" _Nepeta._ "

"At the very least, I think you should go see John. Go check on him. He's your best friend, even if you're too stubborn to admit it sometimes. And best friends are _super_ important!" She nuzzles her face in your hair and hugs you closer, and suddenly you're finding it very hard to argue with anything she says.

"If he needs me to baby him, fine. I'll swing by that sterilized hell-hole he calls home later. But _now_ I have work to do."

"No, go now."

"In a second."

" _Now_." She stands back up then and flops back onto the bed, curling up into a ball. Suddenly, you feel bad for waking her up. Just because you have trouble sleeping sometimes doesn't mean she should have to suffer with you. " _Go_."

"Ugh, fine. _Fine_." You scrub our hands across your face and sigh, before standing up again. "I'll be back in a little while." After shoving your phone in your pocket and kissing the top of her head—the only thing visible outside the mound of blankets—you make your way outside.

Beyond the closed-off area of the campus where your camp is set up, the school seems to have come well enough alive. As you squint against the sunlight—you've gotten used to it over the years, so it doesn't bother you now as much as it used to—you can see groups of humans milling around, talking and laughing and living. You pass a dozen people playing what looks like some makeshift version of soccer, and a few teenagers holding what could be a handstand competition—you're not really sure. A few people wave as you pass and you nod in reply, but for the most part you're ignored. Which is good, you think. No stares at all are better than hateful ones.

You're not really sure what to expect by the time you finally enter the old science building. The hallway is mostly quiet, but you can hear a few people talking on the second floor, voices muffled by the ceiling. There are also two voices coming from behind a nearby closed door, as well. Rose, you think. And someone you don't recognize.

John's door is closed, but the messy _DO NOT DISTURB_ sign is taped to his door so you figure he must be inside even though you can't hear him. Ignoring the sign, you knock. "Hey, ass-face. You in there?" When you don't get a reply, you try the knob, and after a second of staring at the huge office-lab x2 combo extravaganza you sigh and close the door again. No luck. For a second you consider the possibility that maybe he's not even in the infirmary, before forcibly drowning that line of thought. It's difficult enough to get him out of the building for meals, and he hardly leaves for anything less than weapons training and sparring. And as far as you know, he's got four new patients to watch over. He's still inside somewhere.

You make your way over to the door where you can hear talking, instead. When you knock this time you get more of a response, and the voices go quiet for a moment before Rose speaks up again, louder this time. "Come in."

As soon as you open the door, you catch a split-second glimpse of Rose sitting cross-legged on the floor across from a girl with blonde hair you don't recognize, but the girl freaks out the minute she catches sight of you. The next thing you know, you're stumbling against the opposite wall, back in the hallway. "What the _hell_?" Your face is stinging like fuck, and there's something wet on your lips—when you reach up, you realize your nose is bleeding.

Fuck this. You're going back home.

Suddenly, the door opens again, and Rose is standing there looking mildly distressed. "Karkat—I didn't expect you here, I'm sorry," she sighs, and you wave one hand in her direction, the other pinching your nose closed. You don't see the new girl, so you figure she's still inside. It occurs to you then that yeah, you probably should have announced told them who you were or something. This wouldn't be the first time you'd been mistaken for something you're not.

"Jesus Christ, _ow_."

"Oh, goodness. Here—let me see if I can find something. Hold your head back." She disappears into John's room before you can tell her not to worry about it, and you're left standing there awkwardly in the hall.

There's movement in the corner of your vision, you can see the blonde chick staring at you from the doorframe now. You turn your head and glare. "What the actual fuck?" Okay, not the nicest greeting, but she _did_ slam a goddamn door in your face. Totally justified.

She snorts, crossing her arms, and wow—this one's going to be fun to have around. You can just _feel_ it. "I should be asking _you_ that question, you know."

"Wh— _fuck!_ " Rose is suddenly kneeling next to you, moving your hand and pressing a rag to your face, and _what the hell that really hurts_. She doesn't even blink, and there's a glint in her eye that makes you think she might have done it on purpose. _No fighting_. Yeah, whatever. Message received. (Painfully.)

"Karkat, this is Vriska. Vriska, meet our establishment's second-in-command. I trust you won't go injuring him unnecessarily in the future? He's not much use if he's been broken, after all."

Vriska's eyebrows go farther up than you'd like.

" _This_? You put _this_ in charge?" she asks, and her voice hits higher an octave as she stares at you with this horrible mixture of fear and disgust. Wonderful.

You growl at her, just for show, but even though you know it's going to happen you still feel disgusting when she takes a few steps back.

" _Karkat_ ," Rose hisses, and yeah that probably didn't help. "Vriska, he isn't going to hurt you—we talked about this. There are some people here that you might find threatening, but I can assure you they are just as human as you and I."

"Yeah, right," she bites back, eyes still wide and fixed totally on you.

Rose holds up the rag then, now blotchy and gross, covered in blood. The movement bumps your nose and you flinch, because _fuck_. "Human blood— _his_ human blood. It isn't quite red, but look and see that there is no black. He is _not_ a monster. _No one_ here is a monster. And if you are not prepared to deal with that, I will have to take matters up with John." Vriska doesn't say anything else, so you take that as a good sign and decide to get the hell out of here. You knew this was a bad idea. Paperwork is better than this. Rose hands you back the cloth and you press it to your face, but she keeps her hand on your shoulder even as you stand up. "Go let John take a look at that," she says after a moment. "Just to be sure it isn't broken."

"Yeah, well, I don't have a fucking clue where he's holed his sorry ass up, so I can't actually do that."

She rolls her eyes and nods to the stairwell door, "He was upstairs, finishing up in the surgical room last I saw, and we haven't heard him return. I can only assume he's still there."

You blink. "Wait, what happ—"

"I really must insist that you go," she says, glancing over to where Vriska's still standing, tense and wary and looking like she's about to bolt. Rose shoves you a little bit, and you realize she's not going to tell you anything else so you head farther down the hall, really fucking frustrated with pretty much everyone right now.

Walking up the stairs is kind of hard when you're still holding your head back to stop the blood flowing from your nose, and since it's still going you're starting to think that maybe it _is_ broken. Well, shit.

The second floor of the building looks much the same as the first, a hallway lined with doors that lead to more repurposed classrooms and research labs. Some of them have signs taped up, scribbled with either a name or a function in John's blocky handwriting. The voices you'd heard from downstairs have quieted, replaced by sound of running water.

Halfway down you can see the door labeled _SURGERY_ is half opened, so you make your way toward it and hope John actually is inside. You're getting really fucking tired of chasing after him.

When you get to the entrance, however, you pause.

The room is one of the repurposed labs, so there are long tables and counters and shelves everywhere. They've been cleared off and filled with piles of gauze and bands of thread and a bunch of other stuff that makes your body hurt just looking around. In the center of the room, two teacher's desks have been pushed together and covered in fabric to make a makeshift operating table, and on it you can see the unconscious body of some kid around your age. He's on his side, mostly naked, and covered with more stitches than you've ever seen in your entire life.

John's standing at the sink, still in the same clothes from two days ago but now with a lab coat you've only seem him wear a few times. It's buttoned all the way to the top, covering most of the dirt and grime on his clothes, and it's smeared red, red, red with blood.

This guy, you realize, must be Dave. It has to be. There's no one else it _could_ be. And now you understand what Meenah meant when she said he probably wasn't going to make it. To be honest, he looks dead now, even. You can't make out the rise and fall of his chest, and you can't really even hear his breathing. But he's not covered up, so you take that as a good sign.

The water shuts off, and you look up just in time to see John turn in your direction. "Karkat? What ar—oh my God, what happened?"

"The blonde chick downstairs," you say, and immediately he's ushering you over to a chair and rifling through one of the shelves.

"Vriska? Did she punch you or something?"

"With a fucking door."

He snorts, and you roll your eyes as he takes the rag from you, much gentler than Rose. "No offense, Karkat, but that's kind of lame." Immediately, he starts wiping the blood off your face and cleaning you up, holding your chin, so you don't get the chance to reply until he reaches over for what looks like a roll of really thick medical tape.

"I didn't ask for your opinion, dumbass."

"Yeah, well, you're here, aren't you? And it looks to me like it might be broken. Oh my God, I can't believe you broke your nose on a door." He laughs again, before ripping part of the tape off with his teeth. "Hold still." Carefully, he pulls it tight over your nose and _you absolutely can't be held accountable for the noise you just made because haha fuck fuck fuck ow fuck_.

For a second, your vision fuzzes out, and when you finally blink the world back into focus John is staring at you with the saddest apologetic look you've seen in a while. "Sorry, necessary evil. Try not to bump it or anything. So, like... no sleeping on your face. Or falling. Or making out." You narrow your eyes at him, and he just shrugs, grinning a little too much for your liking.

"Fuck you."

"Rude! You have a girlfriend."

"What are you, five?" you grumble, and he just chuckles to himself at your expense.

There's a pause after that, both of you unsure of what to say, before John finally stands up and breaks the silence. "So what did you need? If Vriska wrecked your face more than normal, you must have already been here for something," he says as he starts to retreat back to the sink and wash the new blood off his hands. Now that he isn't in front of you, you have a better view of Dave—and you have to turn around again so you don't.

Jesus fuck.

You swallow and shrug even though you know John can't see it. "Kankri came by our tent and asked me to come check up on you."

"He did?" The question is just as cheerful as the rest of your conversation, but now there's an edge to his voice you don't really like. Hysterical exhaustion, maybe? Maybe.

"Yeah. So, uh, how are you?"

"I'm _fine_ , Karkat. Geez."

You roll your eyes and try again. "How's he, then?"

The water shuts off, and you watch as John goes to wipe his wet hands on the front of his coat before thinking better of it and grabbing one of the cleaner-looking towels nearby. He sighs, and then shuffles over to sit on the floor next to your chair, resting his back against one of the legs. You just sort of watch him, a little worried, because you can't really tell what he's thinking right now.

John's always been quick to make friends, and that's half the reason you think he never really got involved with Approachers before. He's too trusting—too friendly. Unexpected death is inevitable nowadays, and even with all he's had to deal with you don't think he's ever really accepted that. Or maybe he has—honestly, you don't really know.

Maybe you should try talking to him more.

All you _do_ know is that he looks tired—and not just _ugh-I-need-sleep_ tired, either. The kind of tired that seeps into your soul and eats you from the inside out. The kind of tired that comes from endless battles in an endless war against an enemy you can't see, you can't hear, you can't feel.

"Nineteen broken bones, sixty-seven external lacerations, punctured small and large intestines, a ruptured spleen, and massive internal bleeding," he says, and then he lets out this hopeless chuckle that kind of crushes your heart and wow you're feeling really sappy all of a sudden. Maybe you lost more blood than you thought.

"Holy shit," you breathe, because yeah. Holy shit. "Is he—?"

"Alive? Yeah, by some ridiculous crazy unheard of miracle or something. By all medical accounts he should be dead—he should have died _hours_ ago. But nope. He still has a pulse, and he's still breathing. Barely, but it's still happening."

"Whoa."

"Yeah."

"What about the other members of their little suicide brigade? Besides Vriska, because she's doing just fucking _fine_ if you ask me."

John nudges your thigh with his head and snorts. "Yeah, Vriska's alright physically. Mentally, though? I mean, she's spent the last six years fighting for her life. What can you expect?"

"So have we, you know."

He shakes his head. "Not like she has. Or the rest of them, for that matter. I can't imagine what it was like trapped in a city for so long."

You shrug, because yeah, he's probably right. But that still isn't an excuse to break your nose, you think. _That_ was totally uncalled for. "What about the others? I heard one of them got turned, so I guess I'll be moving people around soon. Whoever it is'll need a place to live."

"Yeah, Terezi—Nepeta's friend. She was the only one, thank God. She had a nasty wound down her arm, too. Dirk and Dave were touch and go for a while, though. Or Dave was, at least. He was covered in blood when we found him—like, seeping-into-his-wounds-type covered. I don't know how he didn't get Infected. You should see his clothes—or what's left of them, at least. I don't think they started out that color. Actually, I'm totally sure of it."

"That bastard had better thank his fucking stars, then. That's lucky as hell."

"I don't think hell's very lucky, Karkat."

"It's an expression, dumbass."

"Whatever," he nudges your leg again, and you roll your eyes. You kind of missed this, both of you going back and forth. Best friends are important, Nepeta had said. You wonder if John still thinks of you as his. "Gamzee's already started going through withdrawal, and Tavros is with him now, trying to get him calm. That's going to take round-the-clock care, so I think I'm just going to have them stay together for the next few days, 'til he's at least coherent again. I don't know. Tav was in here a minute ago, helping me. He seemed alright with it." John sighs, scrubbing his hands over his face. "And Dirk—I don't even know where to start with Dirk. I've got him in a cold bath, trying to break his fever. His external injuries aren't bad, but I don't have a clue what's going on inside his body. I don't even know where to start."

You hum in acknowledgement, because, really, what can you say? _You can do it!_ or _Don't worry, we all die at some point_. There's no good middle ground, so you just don't say anything at all.

As it turns out, you don't really have to.

John laughs again, and then stands up, stretching. "Anyway, see? I'm fine. No need to worry. Now go get some sleep, geez. It's almost what—one? It's almost one. How are you even still awake?"

You stand too, and absentmindedly reach up to scratch at the throbbing bandage on your face before John catches your arm and fixes you with a look that says _don't fuck that up or I'll press harder next time_. "I could say the same about you, you know. I doubt you slept at all on the way back from wherever the hell you ended up, so it's been, what, forty hours? Probably more? Have you even eaten anything?"

"Like I said—I'm _fine_. Now, I'm going to get cleaned up and crash, like I'm sure Nep did when she got home. Or did you guys have a little fun first?"

He grins, and, "Damn it, John, put your fucking eyebrows down. _Down_. No, stop. Stop it," you sputter, and then throw you hands up because, "You know what? Fuck you. Fuck."

"Eloquent."

"Shut the fuck up, John."

* * *

**[5/29/37]**

Two days later, Terezi wakes up, and after clearing her injuries John brings you and Feferi in to help start adjusting her to the changes she'll face now that she's like you. At first, you're worried because she's _blind_ and you've never had to deal with someone disabled on campus. Most died back when the first wave of Infection hit—easy prey.

You learn almost immediately that your fears are completely unnecessary.

John seems just as baffled as you when he explains that the Infection had completely bypassed her eyes, and instead overcompensated for her blindness in other areas. That her other senses are almost frighteningly off the charts in terms of sensitivity. Hearing, smell, taste, and touch had all gone into the equivalent of come crazy ridiculous permanent caffeine overdrive, he says, and even though it'll cause her all kinds of discomfort for a while she'll eventually adjust just fine. Things will be different, of course, but she'll survive.

She stays in the infirmary for a few more days before John releases her, and after a series of long, drawn out introductions you assign Rufioh as her roommate. They're the two newest to turn, and he'd been living on his own the past few weeks, anyway.

That night, you hold the meeting you'd promised the day Nepeta and the rest had arrived back home. You announce it during breakfast, Terezi's first meal with the camp, and then explain the situation once everyone's gathered in the open area at the center of your tents. More introductions are made, and all in all the affair is relatively uneventful. Mostly, everyone seems intrigued about the fact that she technically can't see.

You don't talk to John much after that, but the next morning during dinner Jake bursts into the cafeteria and demands you come with him right that instant _please_. Everyone goes quiet, and you're about to tell him off for being awkward and intrusive and a bunch of other things when he _insists_ because it's _kind of an emergency I think_.

"How can you not know if it's an emergency or not?"

"Just _come!_ "

You don't really have any other choice but to follow him after that, and you end up getting dragged all the way to the infirmary without any sort of real explanation. When he opens the door, you're greeted immediately with the oh-so-lovely sound of someone puking up their guts, and you almost turn around because you're _not_ a doctor, damn it! This is John's territory.

Instead of listening to you complain, though, Jake just shoves you into the open doorway and oh. Okay.

There's a kid you've never seen before kneeling on a makeshift mattress, bent over a waste bin, heaving. He looks like he's around Jake's age, except you can't really tell because he's skinny and pale as fuck, with platinum-blonde hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. You can't see his face, but he's shaking so badly you're not even sure how he's managed to stay sitting up.

John is sitting the ground next to him, wiping off his face and mouth with what looks like a damp rag every time he comes up for air, and oh. Fuck. Oh fuck.

The stuff he's coughing up looks like tar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prince is awake.
> 
> As always, feel free to hit me up on tumblr at [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/). At the request of one reader, I've also started organizing character profiles and specific details (general appearance, weaponry, role on base, etc.) that may have gotten skimmed over in the story itself. You can find a link to it on my writing page or by adding the extension [/freightstuckbabies](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/freightstuckbabies) to my url. As always, feedback is welcomed and encouraged! (:
> 
> A special thanks goes out to my fantastic beta reader and friend [jackfrostitution](http://jackfrostitution.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. 
> 
> And, on one last note, I'd like to apologize for the huge delay in updating this story. If you follow my blog, you may be aware that these past two months have been kind of rough for me, but thankfully things have smoothed out and I now have the time, will, and means to continue writing. Until further notice, I'll be posting on my regular two week schedule! (Which hopefully will be until the end of this massive thing... but we've got a long way to go!) I'm very grateful for all of you, and you kind words and encouragement have kept me positive and motivated. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and happy new year!


	10. Run

**[5/30/37]**

**== > JOHN: DEAL WITH A HUGE FUCKING DISASTER**

The sky is dark, clouded over more than its usual three AM overcast, and you're tucked away in Dave's room. It's small, but even so you've set up a kind of nest in one corner—a temporary office spread out on the floor. Even though it's been six days since you brought him home, he's still barely holding on, and you want to be right on-hand if anything happens. He's stable, yeah. But he's just too _still_ and too _pale_ and you're more than a little afraid that you'll wake up one morning to a corpse. To a dead Dave.

You haven't gotten much sleep this past week, and you can feel your eyelids starting to sag as the words in front of you—the words of some not-so-ancient professor from the not-so-ancient past—start to blur a little bit. But you can't sleep. No, you can't sleep. Not until you figure out what's wrong. 

And then suddenly you hear Jake barreling down the hallway, stomping like a goddamn stampede and more than likely waking everyone in the building with enough sense to sleep. Before you can get up from your cocoon of papers and books and blankets to scold him for making such a goddamn racket, though, he's already skidding into the doorway, disheveled and panicked, babbling at twelve miles a minute.

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and for the last three days you've known something was PROBABLY DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT with your two critical patients. Beyond their gruesome external injuries, that is. You've only just begun to put the pieces together, though—only enough to come up with a loose working theory—so when Jake starts raving and pulling at his hair and just sort of generally looking frightened, you feel your face pale because shit, this is it, and _you still need more time_.

Moments later you're bolting down to the same first-floor room where Dirk's been since you first brought him in, completely awake and more than a little unhappy.

You're not sure what you're expecting, really, but it certainly isn't anything like _this_.

Fuck. You're so fucked.

Dirk is propped up on his pillows, curling in on himself, and there's a pooling trail of _black_ dripping down from his mouth. It's spattering and soaking into the sheets with every passing hack-cough-wretch that crawls its way up his throat, and before you have time to think about what you're doing you pull the blankets off his body and lean him over the side of his makeshift mattress bed. Hard flooring is easier to clean than fabric, and even if it's coming out of his own body you don't want him touching any more of the stuff than he already has.

"Give me the trash bin."

"What?"

"The fucking trash bin, Jake. Hand it to me." You don't take your eyes off Dirk, who's staring blearily off to the side and not really focusing on anything, and brush his bangs out of his face with one hand as you reach out toward Jake with the other. After what might be more fumbling and scrambling than necessary, you manage to get the cheap plastic thing propped up between Dirk's knees, catching most of the bile so the mess it at least somewhat contained.

"John, I'd really appreciate it if you could shed some light on this rather frightening situation," you hear your cousin say, voice strained, and when you look up you see that his green eyes are wide and he's wringing his hands, standing in the doorway like he's not sure what to do with himself. Which he probably isn't.

You wish you could give him a straight answer, you really do, but telling him what you think is going on might be worse than leaving him in the dark. So instead you send him off to find things—a rag from your own room, some warm water, Karkat—and you pretend not to cringe when you hear him banging around, causing more of a nervous racket than he already has. By now, you're sure most everyone else in the building is awake, and it's really only a matter of time before someone wanders down and sees... this. And panics. And that really can't happen.

When Jake finally brings you a sloshing pan and cloth with shaking hands, you curbside his mission to get Karkat and send him up to find Tavros, instead. No one is allowed on the first floor until further notice.

There's a lot of nodding and not much moving, so you _glare_ because come _on_ , Jake, _geez_ —don't be such a wimp. It's just a little blood. (Even though you're kind of maybe freaking out, too.)

As soon as he's gone, you set to work cleaning up Dirk as best you can, wiping of his face and tucking his hair back into the collar of his shirt to keep it out of his face and scooting all the soiled blankets into a messy pile away from the two of you. By the time Jake returns, your hands are streaked with black and the bandage you've had wrapped around your injured right wrist—the one you fucked up when you decided to make war with the metal gymnasium door—is completely soaked through.

You make sure Jake doesn't stay long, ushering him out again as soon as he appears in the doorway.

You wish you could do more than just _hold_ and _wipe_ as Dirk keeps heaving and heaving and heaving because you're supposed to be able to _fix_ these kinds of things, damn it! And right now you don't think you're really doing anything at all. You try to get Dirk's attention a few times, but he doesn't respond to anything you say. As far as you can tell, he's still only half-conscious, and you're thankful Jake had been nearby because otherwise you think Dirk might have just drowned in the black muck still crawling its way up through his system.

Not soon enough, you hear the building's front door open—or, rather, you hear Karkat's voice carry over the symphony of choking right in front of you. He's yelling, complaining, clearly not happy, and you can't really blame him—you did just have him pulled out of a meal, after all. (Or at least you think you did. You're not really sure what time it is, but you think maybe it's around dinner for him and the others.) The pissed-off protests stop dead, though, when Jake just sort of pushes him into the doorway and he _sees_.

The one thing you take comfort in is that he looks even more panicked than you.

* * *

It takes close to an hour to get Dirk cleaned up and calmed down. You're stuck most of the work while Karkat interrogates you, asking the same four questions over and over and over until you finally yell, "Give me a second, Karkat—stop complaining or help!" and he shuts up.

Jake, unsure of what else to do, just sort of frets along the edge of the room looking pale until you send him back to his tent to lie down because he looks like he's going to pass out (or puke or freak or something else just as horribly dramatic) and you've got bigger things to worry about.

You end up changing Dirk into some of your own clothes because you don't have anything else on-hand for him to wear, and he's so skinny the fabric practically swallows him up. Neither he nor Dave have been able to eat since arriving—you don't have the equipment to set up any kind of nutrition IV—and you know if they don't wake up soon they really _will_ start to wither away. Starvation is a slow, painful thing, and you think it's one of the worst ways to go. Worse than a thousand claws tearing at your skin. Worse than a bullet, worse than a blade. You'd never wish it on anyone. Never. (You know more than you should about starvation, really—more than you could ever learn from books. Those first winters before you found Rose are something you wish you could forget.)

Eventually, Dirk passes out again, and once you're absolutely convinced nothing horrible will happen while you're gone you head into your own room across the hall. You're a mess now, too, and before you can sit down and sort out what's going on you have to get yourself as cleaned up as you can.

Karkat trails behind you, seething, but you take the time to get your thoughts in order as you pull of your shirt and start to change the bandage around your wrist. It doesn't hurt much anymore, really, but that could just be because your won't stop pumping fast no matter how hard you try to keep a calm appearance.

By the time you turn around, Karkat has started pacing, arms crossed and scowling in your direction. He's got his lips pursed shut like he's straining to hold in everything he wants to say, and the moment you make eye contact he explodes, throwing his hands up and out in your general direction. " _What the fucking_ hell _just happened_?" He shouts, and you glare back because _Jesus shit Karkat keep your damn voice down_. Instead of saying that, though, you just sort of scrub your hands down your face and sigh.

"I knew it was too good to be true—no one's that lucky, Karkat. No one," you say, leaning back against the counter behind you.

"Don't get all fucking mopey on me, you piece of shit. That was blood—that was _blood_. That was fucking _black shit_ coming out of the kid's protein chute. There's only one thing that can mean, but you and I both know it looks way off-base."

"That's the _problem_ ," you say, and then you start pacing too. Karkat stops mid-step and just watches you as your voice slowly gets louder and louder and louder. You can feel your eyes widening, your heart racing, the panic setting in no matter how hard to try not to let it win. "All the symptoms are there. He's been unconscious for days, he's been sick—high fever, chills, all that bullshit—and his _hair_ , Karkat. Have you seen his hair?"

Both of your friend's eyebrows shoot up and he looks at you like you've finally lost your mind, which, now that you think about it, you might actually have. "What the fuck does that have to do with anything? So he's been dying his hair brown or whatever—what the hell does that matter? Ampora's been doing it for years. Rufioh too."

"Dirk has, like, eight inches of blond roots, Karkat— _eight inches_. When we picked him up six days ago he had a full head of brown hair. How familiar does that sound? No one's hair grows that fast. No one who's body hasn't been kicked into overdrive, eating itself from the inside out. Terezi was a redhead this time last week. Now she's not."

There's a beat of silence as the pieces start falling into place, and you can see the exact moment Karkat reaches the same conclusion you have because his eyes widen and _shit_. Shit, shit, shit. "...But he's still so fucking pale."

" _Think_. It's all the same. All of it. Take your mind off the coloring for a second and just _think_."

"Well then why the fuck hasn't he lost his shit yet? It's been almost a week—the virus works faster than that."

"The flu used to change every year. And the chicken pox—what makes this _thing_ any different than the chicken pox? It built up resistance to the vaccine years ago. It _mutated_ , Karkat. It _grew_. It _evolved_. Are we naive enough to think the EI Infection couldn't do the same?"

He breathes out long and slow, air whistling through his pointed teeth as he blinks at you and you can see it—you can see the realization in his eyes. Because if it's true—if you're right—then everything you've been working toward for the past six years has been for shit. You don't know how to fight the virus; you've only ever known how to push it back a little farther. How to survive. But now? If you've lost your only window of opportunity to save the people who've been hit, then you're fucked. There's no way out.

"So if my thinkpan is processing your bullshit correctly, you're telling me we've got at least one—possibly two—biohazards camping out under your fucking roof? You said Strider—Dave—was covered when you found him. Covered. I'm going to jump out on a fucking limb here and guess that if one has whatever this shit is both of them do." You know—oh, God, do you _know_. But Dave's been mostly quiet up to this point, so you've been trying not to think about it. Dirk is the one on the verge of waking up, so he's who you have to worry about now. "You couldn't just flush the shit out of their systems?"

You shake your head because no, you've already thought of that. "It's been six days, Karkat. It's too late. This whole thing—all the pieces are the same. It's like someone took a negative picture of you or Nep and the spread out the development over a couple of days or something. And even with the longer time-frame it's probably too late. Best case scenario, Dirk snaps before the weekend's up. Worst case scenario, he goes bad before the end of today."

There's a beat of silence as that sinks in for both of you, and you have to sit down. You _need_ to sit down. But at the same time you just want to run, run, run as far away as you can because _no, no, no_. You _know_ what you _have_ to do, but _oh God oh God you don't think you can_. You have a duty to the people who trust you, and that number reaches high up into the hundreds. You have a duty to keep them out of harm's way, to heal them, to keep them safe—and in keeping two potentially-lethal time-bombs under your protection you're putting everyone at risk.

"What the fucking hell are we going to do?"

You don't know. You don't know.

Dirk is sixteen, the same age as your cousin. He's just a kid. He's a _brilliant_ kid, from what his brother told you. He has a future ahead of him, bleak as it might be in this fucked up world you're stuck in. You've smashed in heads without thinking. You've broken arms and crushed torsos and _killed_ without blinking because they were _monsters_ and you had to _survive_. You can break in metal doors, but you don't think you're strong enough to kill a kid on a hunch that he'll try to tear you to pieces sometime during the next seventy-two hours.

(But would that really be strength?)

And oh, God. Dave.

You feel your stomach lurch because _how could you look him in the eye and tell him you killed his brother_. You couldn't. You can't. You won't. And if you have to take Dave's life, too—

No.

You don't think you can.

You press your palms against your eyes and let your weight drop into your desk chair and hold your breath and everything goes so, so still. So still. But not quiet, not dark—because behind your eyelids you can see red and black and yellow and—

When was the last time you slept?

Karkat shuffles to your side, oddly quiet, and after a moment you feel a hand on your shoulder anchoring you to the present. "I don't know," you answer, because that's all you can say. You're exhausted—your body and your heart and your mind are just _so tired_ and you _don't know what to do_. But you have a job, you have responsibilities, and you have to think of something. Anything. You have to fix this. "At the very least, we have a few hours before we have to make any real, big, super important decisions. For now, we can just—"

Suddenly, both of your phones start beeping, and you barely have enough time to register the noise before the emergency alarm in every building across campus starts ringing.

* * *

You blink for a second, not sure what to do, and then suddenly you're up and bolting for the Infirmary door. You almost crash into Tavros as he comes careening down the stairwell from the second floor, an iron grip wrapped around the wrist of a shaking, wide-eyed Gamzee. You've got your phone halfway out of your pocket already, and before Tav has the chance to ask what's going on you glance at the screen to confirm what you already kind of know and _shit_.

It's like someone has flipped a switch in your body, and suddenly all of your energy has come rushing back, pumping through your body from some unseen, hidden source—and it fucking _hurts_.

"John! What's—"

"Tav, get everyone upstairs—move any first level patients you can up with you and barricade the entrance. Seal the windows," you order harsher than you intend, and without waiting for a response you bolt, already pushing the main doors open as Karkat takes off after you. The sun should be coming over the horizon any minute now, so it's your best guess that most of his people have returned to their tents. "Karkat—start gathering the security teams from your camp. I'll meet you at the Cabinet. If Jade isn't already there, she will be soon." You glance over in his direction just in time to see him nod, paler than usual but determined, and he takes off to the eastern grounds. True to your word, you sprint for the Cabinet, directing the few stragglers you meet to the northern side of campus, away from danger.

You try to make sense of the pesterchum log on your phone as you move. It's the emergency memo board, the same one you used just days ago to call the code orange on Dave's group. But this time Eridan's purple text is flashing, choppy and frantic, telling you that everything is about to go to hell.

caligulasAquarium [CA] 1 MINUTE AGO opened memo on board emergenciie2 only

CA: code red

CA: im patrollin on the southern perimiter an theres a group a stis approachin nearby

CA: a big fuckin pack

CA: eta seven minutes

CA: this is me callin for backup

twinArmegaddons [TA] 1 MINUTE AGO responded to memo

TA: ii am 2ettiing off the lockdown alarm and 2endiing the northern patrol two you.

TA: try not two fuck thii2 up and get u2 all brutally murdered.

It's been just over two years since you last issued a code red, and since then there have been so many new additions to the camp you're not entirely sure everyone will know what to do. You try to go through lockdown drills every so often, but practice and a real attack are two completely different things. The emergency memo board only sends messages out to members of the security and executive teams, so, just as you hit the Cabinet door and yank it open, you pull up a separate memo board that only you and Karkat have administrative access to—one that goes out to the whole camp. People need to know what's going on before panic starts to set in, if it hasn't already.

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board iimportant announcement2

EB: we are officially going into lockdown, everyone.

EB: this isn't a drill or anything.

EB: according to southern patrol, there's a pack approaching fast, so i need everyone to stay calm and cooperate.

EB: all members of the security and scouting teams should report to the armory immediately. from there you will pick up weapons and ammo to help pad the southern defenses.

EB: everyone else should move to the cabinet and library based on your usual lockdown instructions. make sure to check in with your emergency group leaders!

EB: it is very important that everyone stays calm for the next few hours while things are taken care of. i promise that i will do my best to keep you safe.

The last message you send out leaves you with a heavy feeling in your chest, both because the last conversation you had with Karkat is still fresh in your mind and because you honestly don't have any way to guarantee _anyone's_ safety. All you can do is try. And even if it kills you, that's what you'll do. (You try not to think about the fact that these days dying is so _easy_ , so that kind of vow is something you have to be prepared to follow through with whether you like it or not.)

You plow into the armory room without pause, and when the door swings open you see that you're the first one inside. That's both good and bad, you think, because while it gives you a second to gather your bearings it also means people have been unarmed for that much longer.

Back when you'd lived on the campsite, every refugee had carried a weapon at all times. In the middle of the woods, the threat of an attack had always hung over your heads because you'd been sitting ducks stuck outside of your element. Over the past three years, however, you've been safe—and because of that you think you've gone a little soft. The University was—is—a secluded, half-hidden sanctuary away from the populated areas that Infected targeted on a consistent basis, and as time you'd gotten out of the habit of staying armed to the teeth at all times. Weapons training and daily exercise and such are still mandatory, but you've taken to storing larger weapons in one place for safe-keeping and easier maintenance.

The armory room, once the center for metalwork and sculpture back when the Cabinet was still the old arts college, is an open area with scuffed and scorched concrete flooring and high ceilings. The gray stone walls are lined with metal dividers and repurposed shelving, and the whole place gives off a kind-of warehouse feel, much like the rest of the building. There are three main sections that tools and equipment have been sorted out into—firearms, blades, and specialty weapons—and you can remember the hours spent sorting through everything like it was yesterday.

Boxes of every kind of ammo are stacked neatly in the firearms area, lined up alongside hanging racks of rifles and semi-automatics. A long table has been set up exclusively for cleaning and maintenance, and there are still a few grease-stained rags crumpled up alongside what looks like a half-assembled shotgun.

Similarly, the bladed weapons section is lined with shelves of upright machetes, knives, and everything else you've been able to salvage from army supply stores over the years. There's a small space set aside with sharpening blocks and shining rags, and for some reason the area as a whole is much neater than the guns'.

You, however, make a beeline for the specialty weapons. Everything that doesn't fit into a nice little category ends up there, and that includes your own ancient sledgehammer. It's propped up in your tiny designated corner, leaning against a spot in the wall that's been painted messily with your name. To prevent any confusion, every weapon in the room is labeled, tagged with the owners name and a number, ensuring that it always ends up back in the same spot after training or a mission. The entire setup is actually pretty organized, and if you had more time you might consider patting your cousins on the back for their clever system.

(Glancing down the lines, though, you spot scattered rifles and blades and empty spots on the racks tied with scraps of black—the sign of a soldier fallen in battle. A set of numbers added to the corresponding nametag show the row and column of that person's stake in the markeryard, and as your eyes flick over the whole setup you can't help but wonder how many more pieces you'll be tying before the day ends.)

Just as your hands close over the handle of your hammer, the doors slam open again and Jade rushes in, followed closely by a trail of security and scouting team members not already out on duty. Her own M1 semi-automatic is already slung over her shoulder, and she barely spares you a nod before she starts barking orders, directing groups to start unpacking boxes of ammo for easier access and distributing arms. Within moments, she has some kind of practiced assembly line established, and as soon as she pauses her shouting you dart over to her side to ask where Jake is. You'd thought he'd be with her.

"He keeps his pistols in the tent, so the stupid dummy ran straight to help the southern guard instead of coming _here_ first," she says, and there's an edge in her voice that lets you know that she wants him _with her_ and _out of harm's way._

Your stomach drops just as your phone beeps again. It's the emergency memo, and one glance tells you that you've missed more than you'd like over the past few moments of scrambling.

tentacleTherapist [TT] 3 MINUTES AGO responded to memo

TT: I will be moving civilians safely indoors momentarily. For now, I have sent out members of my team to collect anyone from the overflow tents.

CA: i can hear the pack comin an i think wwere goin to need more than the deployed patrols

CA: eta four minutes

CA: goin to need both a my hands for this so no more updates or nothin

gogothasTerror [GT] 2 MINUTES AGO responded to memo

GT: Im booking it your way to offer my own bullets and jade is heading to the armory.

TT: Please be careful, Jake.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CG: WE CAN HEAR THEM ALL THE WAY FROM OUR OWN FUCKING TENTS, TOO. THEY'RE NOT MAKING EVEN SOME KIND OF HALF-ASSED EFFORT TO HIDE SO I'M GOING TO DO THE GODDAMN EQUATION AND SAY THE GROUP IS ALREADY WORKED UP IN A FRENZY.

CG: ALTHOUGH THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT THIS FAR NORTH.

CG: I'M SENDING THE EMERGENCY RESERVE TEAM FOR WEAPONS BECAUSE I GET THE FEELING WE'RE GOING TO NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET.

You suck in a breath and immediately call out the newest information—Karkat's contribution to the memo—to Jade. The reserve team essentially consists of a massive group of members from the Cured camp who aren't already on either the security or scouting teams under Jade's direction. Because they tend to be stronger than most members from your own camp, the group is almost exclusively made up of gray-skinned backup arms only called out in extreme emergencies. And, apparently, Karkat thinks the situation is bad enough to warrant their extra weight. All members of the reserve are strong in their own right, but none made the official teams for a variety of reasons—the most prevalent among them being an inability to work with others and a general distrust of anyone outside their own camp. Still, you're not willing to turn down what your friend thinks you'll need. Unfortunately, though, it complicated the situation more than it already is. It could be a while before Jade herself makes it to the field.

Your cousin curses and shouts out a new set of instructions to the people left around her, and you realize then that a steady stream of fighters have already been moving in and out of the armory. Your friends are putting their lives on the line to protect your home, and you've yet to make any kind of real move.

"I'm heading out!" you yell, hoisting up your hammer and ignoring the twinge in your wrist as the weight lands on your shoulder. You can't tell if Jade says anything in return because your brain is already out on the front lines. You push your body through the door and down the hall, and when you break outside into the gray morning the air feels heavy and thick. Some weirdly detached part of your mind thinks it might be the sign of a storm, but you're not paying enough attention to really consider the possibility.

You're almost to the main gate on the southern side of the campus (it seems like just yesterday you were driving through with Meenah, an unconscious Dave splayed across your lap) when you hear the first rounds of gunfire, and you push your legs harder, faster, willing your body toward the perimeter. The grass-covered University campus grounds are surrounded on all sides by forest, the only clear path out the paved road leading back to the highway. You can't see anything down the road, though, so you dive into the trees, fighting back branches with your free hand as you follow the sounds of claws and teeth and yelling and bullets and _war_.

And then you see them.

They're scrambling through the woods alongside you, around you, and you swing just as the first one to spot you makes a lunge for your left flank. Another gray body hits a tree trunk in front of you, snarling and leaking black as it goes down in a hail of lead and gunpowder, and it takes you a moment to realize that the flash of purple blurring at the corner of your vision _isn't_ Eridan.

Cronus barely spares you a glance as he aims his rifle at the next mass crawling overhead and pulls the trigger. "Took you long enough, chief!" He yells between gritted teeth, already turning his back to you and the thing now struggling on the ground, dazed from its fall and injuries. You slam the head of your hammer into its skull before it has the chance to get up and whip around to find your next target. Now that you're paying attention, you can see the branches in the canopy above shifting more than the wind could ever make them move, and there are shadows darting between the trunks around you that shouldn't exist no matter how dim the sky is.

"What the hell are you doing out here?" you call, swinging again and catching a snarling thing just as it lurches from the shadows towards Cronus's exposed back. "Rose said the gen-care team was back with the others!"

"Did you really think I was going to let my kid brother fight out here without me to back up his useless ass?"

Another stream of bullets goes whizzing past your head from behind, and you hear Eridan shout something from a distance just as Meenah dives in from the side, impaling another monster through the chest with her staff as it falls from the trees to your right. She flashes you a grim salute and disappears back into the chaos. You take that as a sign that they've got everything covered here and nod back even though she doesn't stick around long enough to see it. This is only the back line of defense, and you have yet to find Jake. You can only assume he's closer to the front lines (which, to be honest, worries you more than it should).

"I'm heading forward!" you shout to Cronus and the others nearby, already pressing ahead. "Hold the perimeter!"

The farther out you move, the more you find yourself crushing bodies and slamming Infected into the natural obstacles towering around you. You follow the sound of familiar shouts and gunfire as you move away from the University border, and it occurs to you then that your forces are spread too thin. Horuss and Equius cross your path once, but as you forge on you run into more monsters than you do soldiers defending your home. You have no way to get the word out, though, so you keep pushing forward in hopes that you'll find the front line of defense to pull them back. You're outnumbered—dangerously so—so you'll have to make up in density what you can't hope to match in sheer size.

Then, finally, you spot them—a familiar flash of green (lined up back-to-back with gray that almost—just for a second—sends a shiver up your spine before you realize that it's the good kind of gray; a friendly gray). Jake and Nepeta, along with the Portland mobsters and a handful of other fighters, are facing off against a swarm of skin and claws from every angle.

Feet spread wide and firmly planted in the ground, your cousin is pounding bullet after bullet from a pistol in each hand through the bodies of creatures from all sides, and as you take out a monster from your right you can't help but admire how much he's grown from the scrawny ten-year-old struggling to grip a clip in the parking lot of some old Seattle gas station. Now, he's one of the best shots at the camp—second only to Jade—and you think probably the only ambidextrous crack-shot left in the country. Probably the world. (Not that there were many of those to start with, really.)

Nepeta, on the other hand, is flitting back and forth, weaving through the pack of danger in a blur of blades and blood. The knives sewn into the fingers of her leather gloves extend her already-impressive claws to an even deadlier reach than normal, and you're reminded yet again why she's the most lethal thing for thousands of miles. The mess of skin and bodies she'd left scattered in the streets when you'd first met her was—is—nothing compared to the carnage and havoc she can wreak nowadays.

"John!" Jake shouts as soon as he sees you amid the fray, and the others around you immediately glance in your direction for a split second before the chaos pulls them all back to the fight. You catch eyes with Droog for a moment just as he pulls the trigger on his own handgun, putting a bullet between the eyes of a creature diving for Boxcars' exposed back, and the Portland mobster nods in silent greeting. You don't respond, though, because you're already thinking two steps ahead, trying to figure out how you're going to get everyone closer to the campus border all while still keeping the flood of death at bay.

Four downed monsters later you think you have a pretty solid grasp of who all is in your immediate area, and you start shouting orders. You yell once, twice, three times before people stop moving forward. The message moves through the air like molasses, slow but sure, and after longer than you'd like you can hear others shouting it too, moving it down the front flank from your left and right like some sick game of life-or-death telephone. Moments later, Jake finally starts stepping backwards toward the direction you came, followed shortly by the rest.

You stay ahead until everyone who had once been in your line of sight is behind you, covering as your friends—your family—struggle to move and fight at the same time. In your peripheral vision you see members of the scouting team and Karkat's reserve forces start to surge up and join the others, but even then you're not sure if it'll be enough to protect your home.

Thunder rumbles overhead and you feel the sound in your bones, but you refuse to let it shake you.

* * *

You don't know how long you fight.

Soon, the overcast sky is leaking icy rain on your heads and without the sun you have no way of gauging how fast the morning gives way to afternoon. The barely-there daylight works both for and against your forces, because while you and your camp suffer in the bad visibility the soldiers from Karkat's camp thrive in the harsh conditions. The downpour itself, however, is a different story. All of you—monsters included—are covered in mud before long, sliding through the slick dirt as you press against each other. Stable footing is barely more than a prayer after a matter of minutes, and more often than not you find yourself tripping over some fallen, half-slain body as you swing your sledgehammer. The dark, blurry chaos also makes it hard to tell who you're trying to defend and who you're trying to kill, because with water and blood and sweat dripping in your eyes you don't have the ability to really _look_ before you take someone out.

By the time you reach the point where three consecutive moments pass without something trying to rip you to shreds, your body is burning with cold and hot all at the same time—you've lost feeling in your limbs and your right hand isn't quite gripping as firmly as you'd hope, so you think your wrist might really be broken, now, if it wasn't already. You can still hear gunfire and yelling, but it's muffled by the torrential waters rushing through the trees overhead.

You're almost there, you think. You've almost made it.

But the fight isn't over yet.

Someone calls your name and you tighten your grip on the handle of your sledgehammer just in time to see something drop from the canopy above you, but before you can blink _it's_ already on your back. The bone-crushing weight lands squarely on your shoulders, but you don't let it take you to the ground—you're stronger than that. But—

 _you've still got your weapon in-hand and you can't let it go because if you do you'll be left defenseless and if the thing gets its claws in your you're fucked, shit, shit, shit_ —

And then suddenly the thing is gone, pulled off you from behind, and you hear six rapid-fire shots at so close a range that your ears start ringing.

A split-second later, the creature is lying in a crumpled heap on the ground at your back, face completely destroyed after being shot at near-point blank. Equius, face grim-set and teeth gritted, is standing over it, fists still raised and poised where he'd just pulled the creature off you, and next to him is the last person you would ever expect to see out in a place like this.

"Kankri?" you blink as you swipe the dripping bangs out from behind your water-prismed glasses. He still has both hands clasped tight around the handle of his handgun, poised post-firing, and his mouth is set in a thin line. The same worn-out red sweater he's had for as long as you can remember is soaked completely through, the heavy rainwater weighing it down, stretching it deep across his thin shoulders and over his hands. It makes him look smaller than he already is, and you wonder if he can even see with the way his own water-logged dark hair is flopped down over his eyes. "Does Rose know you're out here? Cronus and you—the more of your team _we_ have, the less of you there are helping her keep people calm!"

You at least hope Karkat had the sense to stay put back on the base, but, then again, he really isn't much of a fighter anyway. (Although Kankri even less so, if you're being honest with yourself. And that's what has you worried.)

Kankri nods stiffly in response, eyes still locked on the carnage at his feet, and you wonder for a second if he's going to be sick. Before you have the chance to ask if he's alright, though, he starts talking, voice shaky but determined. "There has been a break through the defensive line, and both the young Mr. Nitram and Ms. Lalonde have requested your assistance immediately."

" _Fuck,_ " you hiss just as you feel your blood run cold, "Where?"

"The northern side. The group is small, but we were caught off guard and there is only so much we can do when most of our main forces have been deployed out here."

You nod, already looking past the pair for anyone not currently caught in the fight for survival, and don't respond. The first person you lock eyes with is Rufioh, so you call out for him and then start sprinting back to base. You don't bother checking to see if Kankri and Equius are following you, but you don't particularly care because your brain is already thinking two steps ahead to everyone holed up and terrified back on the main campus grounds.

Every refugee knows how to fight, sure—everyone is required to attend combat and weapons training at least four times a week—but sparring and facing down real monsters aren't _quite_ the same. Having the skills to defend yourself and your family is one thing, but having the confidence to do so is a completely different ballgame. And for most people on the base it's been years since their last encounter with the things that go bump in the night these days.

When you finally make it through the trees back onto the University grounds, you follow Kankri's shouted directions without missing a beat and sprint toward the Infirmary. You had focused so much on guarding the base's southern side—the direction the attack had come from—that you hadn't really thought much about protecting the north. And you doubt Jade had, either.

You'd thought it would be safe. You're paying the price for that mistake.

The rain, now pouring down in sheets, drowns out almost all sound as you run farther and farther away from the woods. What it doesn't block out, though, the sound of your blood pumping in your ears takes care of.

But as you make your way closer and closer to the Infirmary, the chaos picks up again and _God, oh God_ , you hope everyone is alright. The ground is slick and soft, but you don't stumble.

And then you see them.

They're clawing at the walls of the Infirmary and the Cabinet and even though you can't see the library you assume they're there, too. A few are circling through the grassy space, and the rest are pressing against the handful of refugees brave enough to face them down. You can just make out Rose through the torrential downpour, slashing and slashing and slashing as monsters come at her from all sides, and Feferi is nearby, beating back what she can with her own bo staff. Gunfire sounds from a second floor Infirmary window, and you can see the barrel of Roxy's rifle peeking out into the rain. Good, she's still inside—which means Jane probably is, too.

Without stopping, you run right into the fray, making a bee-line for Rose just as the fight starts overwhelming her.

"John!" she yells, eyes meeting yours for less than a second just as she brings down one of her two hunting knives on the neck of a hissing gray thing. Your friend looks relieved, if only for a second, and then she moves to face the monster head on, exposing her body from behind. You don't hesitate to take your place there, fighting from her other side as you stand practically back-to-back.

"Is everyone alright?" you shout in return, bringing your hammer down as the creatures start to swarm. Now that you've brought reinforcements, they're starting to view you as more of threat—or maybe food—than the annoyance the others probably were before. Out of the corner of your eye you can see Rufioh, Kankri, and Equius take on Infected in groups—and then the Cabinet door is opening and a handful of refugees led by Karkat break into the chaos.

"So far, we have only suffered a few minor injuries," Rose calls to you, "and those individuals have been moved into Tavros's care."

You drop another clawed thing and nod, before realizing she can't see you. "Good."

* * *

The rain doesn't let up. If anything, it gets worse as the day wears on, pouring down like a weight on your shoulders as you swing, swing, swing, breaking bones and crushing bodies and fighting not only for your life but for the life of your family. Eventually, you move away from Rose when you see Karkat start to struggle, and Fef rushes to take your place. You shout to Karkat, asking if he's alright, and he just tells you to fuck off with in the most relieved shout you think you've ever heard. The same old scythe he's had since this whole thing started years ago is continually being washed clean by the torrent from above, but you can still see how stained black it is.

You don't know when Tavros leaves the Infirmary—you don't see him when he comes out to join the fight, and you don't know why. (Later, you'll look back and think that maybe he had been coming to get you, to tell _you_ something. You never get the chance to ask.)

But you hear his scream—oh, God, do you hear his scream—and it's like everything stops. You're not sure if it's just your imagination, but you think even the monsters falter for a second when the kid yells, high-pitched and cracked and _so damn full of agony_ and _fuck_.

The momentary distraction is all you need to pound the thing in front of you, and then you're searching, scanning, hunting through the rain to find him—that blur of orange—and when you spot him crumpled on the ground face-first, pinned on his lower back by a creature reeling and jerking from an immaculate, immediate hail of gunfire from above, you don't even think before you run.

One final slam to the skull sends the Infected on top of him sprawling to the ground, and you shout over the thunder for Roxy cover you. You can't tell if she hears you or not because she's _so far away_ , but you know if she doesn't watch your back, someone else—anyone else—will. So you're okay. You're okay, but Tav isn't.

His arms are twitching at the ground like he isn't sure what to do with himself, scratching at the grass, and his chest is heaving hard enough that you think he's about to start hyperventilating if he hasn't already. You can't see any immediate external wounds so you decide right then and there that he probably isn't at risk for Infection, but something isn't right—something isn't right—because he's still yelling cracked and ragged and he's making no move to get up.

You shout his name, tell him to breathe, tell him he's okay, because he's in the middle of a war zone and you need to get him out. He doesn't respond and you realize that you're going to have to move him yourself, but when you reach down to turn him over he just screams and screams and _screams_.

You drop your hammer and grit your teeth and lift him up bridal style, and he fixes you with the most agony-filled stare you've seen in a really, really, really long time before going totally, completely, terrifyingly limp in your arms, unconscious, and _fuck_. No. No.

Everything feels like it moves in slow motion after that.

You burst through the Infirmary door, slamming it open with one foot (shit, you think you might have broken the lock, you'll have to get Equius to take a look at it later if— _when_ you all survive this), and immediately you're met face-to-face with a crowd of terrified refugees packed into the halls, huddled on the floor. You must look like some kind of monster yourself, covered in rain and blood and holding the wrecked, tiny body of a teenage boy so close you think you might break him.

A few people scream, but all you can do is shout for them to barricade the door behind you before you push into your office, the closest room to the entrance. There are a few people inside, tucked near the corners and away from the window, but you don't pay them mind as you shove everything off one of the counters and lay your little apprentice down as flat as you can. You set to work figuring out where his injuries are, what happened, what you can do to help. You pray to the God you stopped believing in years ago that he was just terrified, caught off-guard, but you know somewhere deep down that wasn't the case. It couldn't be the case.

Because you've seen him fight before, and you know that he has more fight in his skinny tiny body than most of the people you have on base.

You can't find anything wrong save for the bruise line slowly blooming before your eyes along his lower back where he'd been pinned, and you think in the grand scheme of things it could have been so, so much worse. So you heave out a shaky sigh of relief and take a moment to breathe. There's a dull murmur outside the door as people talk in hushed voices among themselves, but for the most part the loudest noises are the sounds of fighting outside.

Then, suddenly, there are a few yells from the hall and you turn just in time to see Gamzee stumble in, leaping over the crowd and using more curses in his apologies than anyone you've ever heard. He looks shaky and pale and skinny, so unlike the wild-eyed fighter you met just the week before, and if you hadn't been keeping track of his recovery you don't think you'd recognize him. He has his mouth open to say something, but the minute he lays eyes on Tavros the only sound that comes out is a pained, raspy whine.

"He's fine," say, shaking your head, and you see Gamzee kind of fold in on himself a little, relieved. It's been a while since you met someone so expressive with his emotions—you can read everything Gamzee is thinking across his face, and you wonder for a moment whether that's just how he is or if he's so burned out from withdrawal that he doesn't have the energy to put on any kind of front.

"Thank the motherfuckin' messiahs," he says, his scratchy voice so quiet that you almost miss it under the sound of the commotion through your window.

You need to get back out there, though, so you don't really think about what you're doing before you tell Gamzee to keep an eye on Tavros and head for the door. Everyone is watching you, now, so you do your best to keep your back straight and your head held tall like you're confident everything will be alright—which you are, you think; you _are_.

There are two shaky-but-determined teenagers not much younger than yourself armed with what look like the legs of a broken chair standing at the door, blocking it closed with their bodies because you'd told them to barricade themselves in but weren't specific as to how, and they quietly step aside when you approach, looking up at you like you're some kind of heroic god. (Which you're not—fuck, you're _not_ —but you can't tell them that because the idea that you can somehow save them from an endless, broken world is one of the only things that gives people hope these days, you think.) You put a hand on the shoulder of the kid to your left (you're having trouble flexing the fingers on your right hand and you know now more than ever you can't show weakness so you just kind of let it hang limp, trying to mentally prepare yourself for when you have to pick up your hammer and fight again) and then you're out the door once more.

The rain hits you like a wall, cold and searing and heavy, but the minute you're back into the madness everything speeds up and you have to hit the ground running, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting for your hammer still discarded in the middle of the battle. It's half sunken in the mud where its own weight has it pressed down into the soft ground, so a few moments of useless scrambling around pass before actually find it. You're far from defenseless without your weapon, but even so the ten short seconds it takes for you to hone in and reach it as chaos rages on around you seem longer than they should.

By now, the ground is littered with gray bodies and the soil soaked black with blood. You can see your own forces have doubled in size, and the power shift has put you at an advantage—finally, finally, you there's some kind of end to this whole fucked up situation in sight. Fighting on the campus perimeter must have died down enough to spare the extra muscle, because you spot Horuss fighting alongside Karkat, Meenah flinging her own bo staff in time with her sister, and Slick gouging out the eyes of a monster just as Rose goes for its neck. You're barely back into the fray a minute before you hear someone else call your name, though, and just as you can turn to figure out who it is Rufioh appears at your side, yellow eyes wide.

"How is he? Shit, Doc, is he okay?" he asks, so focused on you that he almost misses the creature coming at him from his left and you have to pull him back just as it lunges, swinging at it yourself.

"He'll live," is all you can say because you know you won't have a real idea of how he's doing until he wakes up—you've learned over the years not to assume. Rufioh seems to sense your hesitance, though, which you can understand. The way things are these days _he'll live_ could mean a whole host of shaky promises that aren't exactly positive. Instead of asking you to clarify, he just nods and stabs another monster through the heart with his spear.

* * *

By the time the last body falls, the rain still hasn't let up. You're all exhausted, drenched, and terrified—but after a pause of standing, tense, waiting for the next claw to come, you hear a loud, relieved cackle and it's like a switch is flipped.

Suddenly everyone is laughing, laughing, laughing. Laughing until tears start falling and sobs start running through bodies, but it's all so mixed with rainwater that it doesn't even matter. That first grin had come from Terezi (when did she make it out here?) and as you watch she jumps on Karkat's back, bringing them both to the ground. Feferi crushes her sister in the first hug you've seen them share in a long, long time and Meenah just sort of stands there, dropping her staff but not quite pushing away, either. Rose calls up to Roxy, still leaning out of the second floor window, and after a moment the Infirmary door opens and Jane comes barreling out, slipping and sliding through the mud as she sprints directly toward you without looking back.

Before you know it, her arms are wrapped around your waist and she has her head buried in your shirt as she clutches onto you like you're going to disappear. You fold around her, engulfing your little sister in the kind of all-encompassing hug reserved only for the most desperate of times, the most fulfilling of victories. (You've shared more of these hugs than you'd care to admit, and that thought scares you a little.)

But you can't stay long, you know, because while the carnage inside the base has ended you don't know if the people on the outside are still fighting. You've yet to see either of your cousins, and even though you know they're more than capable of handling themselves that fact makes you nervous. You wait until Jane stops shaking to let her go, and when you do you call for Equius and Meenah and everyone else you can see around you who had started out on the front lines (with the exception of Rufioh, because you can't spot him—but the Infirmary door is still open, so you assume he's gone inside to find his cousin). Before you get the chance to relax, to relish in your win, you're already running back toward the southern side of campus where the others should be.

When reach the southern perimeter, the already-dwindling fight is just powering to a close, and with your added pressure it becomes something near a one-sided massacre with the bloodbath tilted in your favor. There are several wounded huddled back toward the University entrance, away from the carnage, but nothing serious enough to warrant any kind of real panic. You end up carrying Eridan on your back when you finally begin to make your way toward the Infirmary to tell everyone that you've won— _you've won_ —and he curses in your ear the entire way, both because he was stupid enough to get hurt and because you make him carry your hammer in addition to his own rain-soaked rifle.

You reach the northern side of campus a procession of exhausted, bloody soldiers, and the cheer that rises up almost brings you to your knees.

* * *

Hours later, the downpour is still coming down in sheets, but things have started to function as normally as possible again. Healthy refugees are shuffled out of the library, Cabinet, and Infirmary, and everyone is accounted for in some way, shape, or form. Anyone willing to help with cleanup dons whatever gloves Jane can scrounge up from the bowels of the Cabinet, and groups of fighters and civilians alike begin the grueling task of moving the broken, bloody carnage back toward the pyre pit near the markeryard. When the sky dries up, you'll have to burn everything.

You end up back in the Infirmary, tending to the wounded and panicked after two minutes of cleaning up, yourself. Your right wrist is swollen and bruised and barely functional—completely broken, you decide—and you're just grateful that you're left-handed. Progress is slow with only five working fingers in your favor, though.

Kankri helps for a while, running errands and tending to people who just need a bit of calming down, but when you see exhaustion start to sway his steps you send him back to the dorms for rest. He must tell Rose you're running things alone, though, because after that you get a steady stream of members from the gen-care team willing to lend their legs for a bit.

Tavros still hasn't woken up by the time you get things as sorted as they can be and send the last exhausted, bandaged soldier off to sleep. Most of your rooms are filled, now, either with people who don't want to do outside and see the carnage or the few fighters wounded enough to warrant your watchful eye. You have Gamzee move Tavros to his own room instead of putting him in a patient corridor, but you're too burned out to argue when Gamzee refuses to leave his side. In the end, you let him move his own blankets in with Tav's and make a pile like the one you yourself have set up in Dave's semi-permanent space.

Only when everyone else is finally settled do you take the time to check on the Striders. Because of the blood-curdling interruption, you and Karkat never actually came to any sort of real conclusion about the two of them, but after everything that has happened you know that you, at least, have already decided that you won't do anything stupid based on a _theory_. And you won't let anyone else, either.

Dave is still out cold, which doesn't surprise you, but you can see how hollow his cheeks are and you know if he doesn't wake up soon you won't have to make a decision about him at all.

When you make your way to Dirk's room, though, you find something that you're not really expecting to see. Jake, rain-soaked but otherwise clean, is sprawled out across the foot of the younger Strider's bedding, snoring. When you'd seen him last he had been helping Jade move bodies, but now that you think about it you're not sure how long ago that was—you're not sure just how long you've been in here working.

But that's not the surprising part.

The patient himself is propped upright, blinking but tense, a hard gaze fixed on you from the moment you open the door. You're so focused on your cousin, though, that almost a full minute passes before you realize he's watching. When you do, you kind of jump a little (and you totally do _not_ yelp like a prepubescent girl—nope, not you). You can't help but be a tad taken aback by the piercing orange of his eyes—you've seen them already, of course, but he's never been awake enough to actually really _look_ at much this past week. Neither of you stay anything for a moment, and you stand frozen in the doorway while he squints at you, wary. You don't want to move too much or approach him because you're not sure if something will set him off. You don't know how much he remembers from the past week, how much is familiar to him.

After a moment, though, he just kind of heaves this shallow, resigned sigh and glances down toward Jake. "He's lying on my feet."

You can't help it—you laugh.

* * *

It takes more than a little bit of maneuvering to get Jake off the pallet with one hand, and in the end you just end up sort of scooting him onto the floor. He doesn't wake up—instead, your cousin just shifts and keeps snoring after a moment's pause. With Dirk's permission, you take Jake's place at the end of the mattress, perched on the edge and out of the way of Dirk's feet, and sit in silence for a little bit while he gets himself re-situated now that his legs are free.

"You're the guy who found us," he says eventually, and it's not a question—just a statement of fact. His voice is quiet, scratchy from almost a week of disuse, but confident and steady in its own way. (You never talked much to Dirk over pesterchum over the past few weeks, but even so you find yourself wondering if Dave sounds similar.)

You nod, only half-smiling because _wow_ , now that you're sitting down you realize just how absolutely exhausted you are. It kind of hits you like a brick to the face, and you hope it doesn't show too much.

"Yeah, I'm John. I guess it's nice to officially meet you—I really appreciate you, you know, not dying."

Dirk snorts, eyebrows shooting up, and _welp_ you are just the _king_ of first impressions. It's you.

"No problem. It wasn't really high on my list, either, so I suppose that worked out well for both of us," he replies, shrugging a little sluggishly. "I guess I should be the one thanking you, though. For saving our asses. Pyrope—she made it here, too?"

"Yeah," you say, "she's fine." You decide not to elaborate on her condition just yet, because she _is_ fine. And that's all Dirk needs to know right now.

"Serket and Makara?"

"Vriska's down the hall and Gamzee is upstairs with a friend of mine. They're both fine, too—but Vris is still a little freaked out by all of, you know, everything."

He nods again, quiet, and there's another pause as you wait for him to ask about his brother. The question never comes, though, and it occurs to you then that the last he'd probably seen Dave was the same way you'd found him—or at least something similar. He thinks his brother is dead, you realize, and that breaks you a little inside because _shit_ , you don't know what you'd do if something happened to Jane. Or Jade or Jake. And you can't help but be a little awed by how calm he's acting about the whole thing. (Although that could mostly be due in part to the fact that he's still pretty out of it, awake for the first time in days and physically exhausted.)

"Dave's upstairs, too. I've been keeping an eye on him since he got here."

There's a moment that passes where you're not really sure if Dirk heard you because he doesn't react—not really. He just sort of sits there. And then his eyes go wide and you see his pale hands grip the sheets tight—so tight you think he might rip them—and then there's a sheen to his gaze that might be tears (but you're not about to mention it). "That fucking bastard," he says, voice so raspy you almost miss it, and suddenly you regret mentioning anything at all because you're really not sure whether Dave will live or die. (But if you were in Dirk's position you'd want to know, so you know you made the right decision).

You don't really know how to respond so you just kind of hum in response and wait for Dirk to relax a little bit. You don't want to get him too worked up because he's already not doing super great, even if he _is_ on the mend. Instead of saying more about his brother, you make a sort of vague, sweeping gesture in your cousin's direction and say, "That's Jake, by the way. Just in case you were wondering."

Dirk blinks again, still a little watery and trying to absorb even more new information, and you can tell that he's starting to fade out. You doubt he's been awake long and you're sure his body is already exhausted. A week spent fighting off the Infection without food or water would do that to a person, you think.

"Jake as in GT?" He asks after a moment, eyebrows still firmly in place in the upright and raised position, but his tone of voice hasn't changed so you're not sure whether that's a good reaction or not.

"Yep."

"Huh."

The internal debate over whether or not to tell him that your cousin has made a habit of napping in this particular room over the past week is cut short when your phone pings and you both jump a little (again). Although you'd like to ignore it, you know after the events of the day that's not really something you can do, so you just shrug apologetically and pull it out under Dirk's watchful gaze.

— twinArmageddons [TA] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 18:37 —

TA: dont get two 2ettled JN.

TA: ii know youre bu2y a2 fuck but KK ii2 calliing an exec meetiing or 2ome 2hiit.

TA: and youve got two be there for obviiou2 rea2on2.

TA: he 2ay2 there2 2ome 2tuff you want two talk two u2 about.

TA: and al2o there2 the biig obviiou2 glariing ii22ue of how the fuck today actually happened.

EB: what time does karkat want us to start coming over?

EB: like, are we talking really soon as in right now?? or as in later tonight?

TA: he2 already runniing around liike a fuckiing lo2er tryiing two round up everyone who ii2nt an2weriing theiir phone2 2o iim goiing two a22ume he want2 iit two happen liike now.

EB: ugh, fine. i just have a few things to finish up here and then i'll be right there.

EB: if you see karkat before i make it tell him he could have just messaged me himself to save you all the trouble.

TA: got iit.

TA: iill be 2ure two let hiim know he2 a raviing douchenugget moron completely incapable of iindependant thought and ba2iic logiical rea2oniing.

EB: awesome! thanks, sollux.

TA: no prob JN.

— twinArmageddons [TA] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 18:46 — 

When you glance back over to Dirk, you see that he's still watching you, but his eyelids have drooped and he's started sagging back down into the pillows. You tell him you'll have to head out soon, and he seems almost relieved, so you make him promise to get as much rest as he needs before you stand and almost trip over the unconscious green lump still sprawled out on the floor.

"Want me to haul him out of here?" you ask, but Dirk just shakes his head.

"Nah, let him sleep. He looks like he could use the rest. And so do you."

You roll your eyes a little and wave your healthy hand vaguely through the air. "Don't worry about me—worry about yourself. You've been out for a while and—no offense—but it looks like you could use a few hours of beauty sleep, too," you laugh, and he gives you this a kind of tired smirk in return that you take as a positive sign. Before you head out, you double back and rummage through Jake's pockets until you find his phone. After typing in the pass-code, you toss it on the bed near Dirk's side. "If you need anything, though, just message me. I'll be over in, like, twelve seconds. Anything at all." He nods, you smile, and then you're out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! I can't believe it's been two months! For some reason the time just slipped away. I promise to make more of a conscious effort to stay on top of things in the future!
> 
> In other exciting news, I've received some _amazing_ fanart since my last update! An anonymous (??) artist drew **[THIS](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/75839389404/crabwalking-like-a-coward-email-removed)** absolutely fabulous picture of a scene from chapter nine, and [geringeding](http://geringeding.tumblr.com/) on tumblr drew **[THIS](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/75748998035/geringeding-for-egbertiian-who-legitimately)** rad picture of Dave from chapter seven. 
> 
> If you have anything to show me or just want to shout out your feelings about this fic to the world, I've started tracking the tag _[freightstuck](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck)_ on tumblr! (The "freight" tag is train enthusiast-exclusive so I figured it would be best to start something new, heh.) You can also always hit me up on my Homestuck/writing blog, [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! I have a freightstuck page set up where you can easily find chapter posts, fanart, and a compiled list of character profiles/information on the EI Vaccine/etc.
> 
> One one last note, I've started to go back through the earlier chapters of this fic to clean up my grammar/characterization and refine my prose! All major details will remain the same, but I thought I'd give y'all a heads up just in case. 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading this story! It really means a lot to me. At almost nine months and just over a hundred thousand words, this is the biggest project I've ever undertaken. All of your support and love keeps me going. I adore you all!! <3 And, as always, a special shoutout goes to my adorable beta, [Clara](http://jackfrostitution.tumblr.com/).


	11. Is This Happiness?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different.

**== > ROSE: DISTRACT YOURSELF**

You were fifteen when it happened.

You weren't the type to go to large parties, really, but it was the end of your freshman year and your mother had insisted. The night itself is a stop-motion blur—just dark rooms lit up with strobe lights, loud music, and a red solo cup you should have known better than to take. (But it was late and you were caught up in the moment, the excitement, the energy of everyone around you. You couldn't have known there was something extra mixed in with the cheap beer. You couldn't have known.)

But you do remember waking up the next morning in a strange house, in a strange bed, feeling sick to your stomach and wrong, wrong, _wrong._ You remember the phone calls and the policemen and every detail of your therapist's ornate office. You remember the doctor's appointments, the days spent in court, and the discovery just a few weeks later that your life would never be the same. You remember sitting with your mother for hours—not crying, just existing in the same space with her and wondering how she could still stand to be around you after all you'd put her though. You remember making the most difficult decision you'd ever had to up to that point (and for the rest of your life afterward)—the kind of decision no fifteen-year-old should ever have to make. 

Everything stopped. Every string you had attached to the things in the world that defined your existence, your future, your happiness was cut and reattached to one tiny little barely-more-than-an-idea you had never planned, never wanted.

After that one horrible night, your entire life became Roxy.

You didn't return to school the next year. The private academy you had been attending didn't allow _that sort of behavior_ in their student body, no matter the circumstances. Instead, you turned to online courses and in-home tutors for as long as you could, all the best your mother could find. But when Roxy was born, even that became too much to handle. Studying took a backseat to diaper changes and breastfeeding, and by the end of your sophomore year it had become clear that you had to make yet another choice.

Your mother had offered to find the most qualified nannies, the most reputable childcare facilities, but you knew from the beginning that you didn't want her to grow up as you had, raised by a woman who missed your first steps and first words because she was busy working halfway across the world. (You knew your mother loved you, she always had—but sometimes you couldn't help but question her priorities.)

Without school to occupy your every waking moment, however, you suddenly became faced with an overabundance of free time, something you had failed to anticipate in its entirety. Unable to sleep through the night and always on your toes during the day, you were left twiddling your thumbs between the times Roxy needed you. To keep yourself sane, you began throwing yourself back into books, something that had always given you so much comfort. Evening after evening was spent pouring over William James, Mary Ainsworth, and Carl Jung, trying to understand what special brand of madness had taken residence in your head. (Your therapist had been the one to suggest "motherhood", and now, so many years later, you think she might have been on to something with that.)

But when your research endeavors failed to bring you any sort of peace, you turned to the only other escape you knew.

You had written.

 _Complacency of the Learned_ had never been more than a pet project, something to work on between studies, but as that first year with Roxy passed it became so, so much more. (A distraction, an escape, a blessing.) Your mother was busy traversing the globe—just as she always had been—but when you finally finished your first draft's draft she had been the one to read it over. She had been the one to look you dead in the eye through the video chat window and tell you, "Rosie, I really think you got yourself somethin' good here," and beamed.

After that, it was like your whole world clicked again.

You had learned to love Roxy more than life itself, more than anything in the world—a feeling you had never experienced before. Something totally and completely incomparable. But you were still a child trying to live the life of an adult, and your writing gave you a direction your daughter couldn't at such a young age.

It had taken a full year after finishing the first installment of your series to get any sort of publisher interested in you, and by then you had already finished two more books. When you finally did get your work out into the world, though, the response was far beyond anything you could ever have hoped for. _Complacency of the Learned_ took off like few others had, and before long your small cult following had grown into a international interest that spanned across six continents. By the time Roxy was four years old, five of the seven-part series had been released, the first of which had already been filmed and released to theaters, two more in the works.

Suddenly, at nineteen years old, you were one of the fastest-growing entertainment icons in the world, a success story everyone wanted to know the gory details behind. More than three fourths of the material printed about you in tabloid magazines and newspapers was haphazard speculation, rarely true, and on some days it became hard to tell whether you were famous for the novels you'd worked so hard on or simply your unique, morbidly-intriguing circumstances.

 _Do you regret dropping out of school? Do you owe your fame to the connections of your mother, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize? What are your plans for the future? Is it true that you're—_ canI say that on national TV? _—that you're gay? If that's the case, how exactly did your daughter come to be? What advice would you give to young women in your situation? If given the choice, is there anything about your life you would do differently?_

You didn't run away, not really. You just moved as far out of the spotlight as you could, and in doing so ended up on the opposite side of the country. Early in her career, your mother had been instrumental in the establishment and construction of a small university for exceptionally gifted individuals, and that—the Skaian University of Arts and Sciences—became your safe haven. Although well-known in certain Ivy League circles, it was relatively secluded and willing to accommodate your special circumstances, a quiet place you could continue working in solitude and relative anonymity. That particular decision was easy, and in a matter of months you had received your GED and were living on-campus with a four-year-old Roxy.

Your daughter, as she was often wont to do, stole the hearts of both the students and teachers alike, wide-eyed and excited and bursting with barely-coherent enthusiasm as she absorbed the wealth of knowledge around her. When you first arrived, she had just begun to speak in sentences, still jumbled and baby-slurred and adorable. Within months, however, she had mastered the art of simple conversation and begun learning how to read. Her family grew exponentially overnight, and her tiny, brilliant mind stretched to accommodate each new experience. It was amazing to watch, and to this day you still find yourself blown away by her intelligence. (She reminds you so much of your own mother, vibrant and loving and incomparably gifted.)

Initially, you weren't anything to the school. A resident, nothing more—not a student or teacher. But before long you had proofread and reviewed so many papers as favors to the students around you that the administration and board of directors offered you a position on the faculty. The next year, you began working part-time as the instructor for the University's creative writing classes. Regardless of whatever controversy surrounded you, your books were still some of the most popular in recent decades, and accepting the offer benefitted both you and the school. Rather than receive a salary, your living expenses became your paycheck, and teaching became a welcome break from work.

You never could have imagined your life turning out the way it did. When you were young, you had no idea what you wanted to be when you grew up. But the universe works in mysterious ways, you've come to realize, and you know you wouldn't be the same person you are today if things had happened differently.

You still think about your mother sometimes. Realistically, you know there is an almost undeniable guarantee she has long since died, killed or turned or simply gone. And New York is far away—so, so far away. Even if she were still living, you doubt you would ever know.

You owe her everything you are, you think. More than your genes and your life. She had saved you from yourself, held you up so you could survive the things you had no control over, and helped you take charge of the things you did. But she hadn't held your hand—no, she'd taught you the only way to survive your choices in life is to learn from them and find your own way.

You wonder what she would say if she could see you now.

* * *

For the first time in a long time, the grounds are mostly quiet. It feels, you think, like the calm that comes after any storm in great literature. The time of resolution, peace, happiness. But the rain is still pounding down in sheets, hard and heavy and wet as hell, soaking anything and anyone caught scurrying under the chaos. The thunder and lightning have, at least, long since stopped—and they stopped, you think, when the last body fell, like some kind of Victorian-era poetic justice. A universal compensation for what you'd all had the strength to claw your way out of, to survive.

By now, you've managed to clear everyone out of their hiding places and put all those willing to work. The ground is slick, and the feeling in your toes fled hours ago because your socks are soaked even through your boots. The longer the rain falls, the worse the terrain becomes, but you can't stop. The moment you do, you know that everyone behind you will stop, too, and you can't afford to let that happen. Most of your focus is being taken up by the headless, legless gray torso you're holding on to your back by the arms, and any concentration you have left in your system is being rerouted to the tasks of not tripping, not falling—trudging on.

Your name is ROSE LALONDE, and you are TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD. Just a few hours ago, you were FIGHTING for your LIFE against a hoard of INFECTED suicidal enough to INVADE YOUR HOME. Now, you're left with what must be two hundred gray bodies, hacked and shot and dead, scattered throughout Skaia and the surrounding woods. With John busy treating the wounded and panicked, you and Jade have been left to handle cleanup. It's been a long day already—you've been pushing your body to its limits since the sun's rising—but the work is far from over.

The smell of rotting, damp corpses will turn your safe-haven into a beacon for anything left wandering the woods, and you have to burn as many as you can as soon as possible. The rain, as difficult as it's made everything up to this point, is the only thing keeping you from whatever is downwind, and as soon as the ground is dry enough to start a fire it will be a race against the clock to stay hidden. For now, all you can do is gather everything up in one place so the disposal goes as smoothly as possible later on.

Jade's voice carries up over the rain and the wind across the silent procession of three dozen refugees between you, everyone too tired and too focused on the corpses they're carrying to talk. "Good work, guys! We're almost done!" A murmur runs through the crowd—relief—and moments later you're crossing over the last hill between you and your destination.

Years ago, the northeast fields had been a grid of carefully-manicured sports grounds. Now, the spray-painted boundaries have faded, and what's taken their place is a sad, overgrown clearing lined with hundreds of tied-stick crosses and stones, all scratched with names and dates. There are no bodies buried here—only thatched-together reminders of lives lost.

The Markeryard backs up to the forest that runs along the campus edge, and carved out of the ground in a clear spot farthest away from any building is a seven-foot patch of charred up ground, lined on the inside with large rocks. It's the permanent pyre ground, the closest thing you all have to a sacred spot.

This is the only place big enough for all the Infected bodies you've had to move from every acre of Skaia. By now, there are piles of mangled flesh stacked at least your height, ready for burning when the time comes, and a single small pile of wadded up, black-stained clothing from refugees who have already made their way back to their tents to get clean. Along the edge of the Markeryard, you can see a few people moving in and out of the woods, busy piling up rocks around some of the corpse stacks to protect the surrounding grass from any stray embers that might fall in the fires.

You spot Equius directing water-logged Cured and humans alike as he carries with ease a chunk of stone larger than anything you could ever even think to lift. Jade had put he and Nepeta in charge of barrier construction, and they'd done more than their fare share of work to keep things running smoothly. You can't see Nepeta, though, so you assume she's back by the waterfall with the other half of their team.

When you make it to the smallest pile of bodies, swinging the clawed, mangled torso up to the top strains your muscles and you grunt, stumbling a little at the sudden lack of weight on your shoulders.

Behind you, someone starts to sneeze.

"Alright, that's the last of them!" Jade calls from the back of the line. "Get inside and dry off as soon as you're done here! Remember blood protocol! Someone will come around later to collect your clothes!"

Immediately, you turn around to help the next person in your procession of death with his load, and before long the crowd begins to scatter back toward the dorms and tents. Through the rain, you can see dozens of slouched silhouettes dragging their feet. More than half of the people you'd roped into cleanup had fought against the attack, too. They more than deserved their rest.

Jade and Jake are the last people in line, the first of whom is carrying a full corpse across her shoulders. Jake helps his cousin toss it into the pile after slinging one of his own, and with that the last of what had been the largest hoard you'd ever seen is finally gathered up in single spot. The three of you stand in silence, then, exhausted and dripping wet, and it suddenly occurs to you that Jake hasn't said a word in hours.

While Jade busies herself with kicking some of the slowly-sliding bodies back into place, you take a moment to really look at him. He's sopping, black hair is plastered to his face and clothes so soaked they're like a second skin to his body. His wire-framed glasses—the same pair he's had since you met him three years ago—are pushed up on the top of his head, probably tangled in his hair to keep from falling off. Although you doubt he'd been able to see much through them, you don't think going on without is much better. He's squinting around, not really focused on anything, and now that his hands are free he keeps reaching up like he wants to rub his eyes before thinking better of it. He's covered in black shit like the rest of you, and the rain hasn't done anything to wash it off.

You sigh, but the sound is lost to the wind's roar. "You should go as well," you say, and it takes him a moment to realize you're talking to him. "Make your way back to the tents and get yourself scrubbed."

He shakes his head a little too vigorously—like he's trying to convince you _see, I'm fine, I have plenty of energy!_ —and his shaggy, sodden hair flops around too stupidly to be taken in any way serious. You feel your eyebrows raise when a particularly large clump hits him in the eye and he stops, wincing for just a fraction of a second. "Oh, bugger."

"Go, Jake," you say again, but he just keeps squinting at you even as you put your hand on his arm and push him gently back in the direction everyone else has started to move.

"No, no—I'm alright. Perfectly wonderful. There's still so much to be done, and you ladies—"

Jade breaks in, then, appearing suddenly behind you after finishing her carrion abuse. Her glasses, too, are shoved up into her hair, and watching them stand so close together you can't help but think (not for first time) how much they look like siblings. "If the next words out of your mouth are anything like _and you ladies might need my assistance calaboose spectacles diddlyscrum_ I will drag your mattress out into the rain and make you sleep outside for the rest of probably _forever_!" She has a fierce look in her eyes—the look of a leader, a survivor—but no matter how hard she's fighting to hide it you can see so, so clearly that the exhaustion is finally starting to settle itself right down into her bone marrow. "Do what Rose says and get some rest, _geez_!"

"But—"

" _Everything you own, Jake. I will put everything out in the fucking rain._ "

You roll your eyes as you watch the two of them glare at each other, both too stubborn too look out for their own self-preservation and completely unwilling to admit so. When neither says anything else, though—locked in a standstill of squinting, green-eyed absurdity—you interject. "As positively _thrilling_ as this little spat of yours is, I wouldlike to check on Roxy and Jane, and I don't find the idea of leaving the both of you out here to meet your deaths in the cold particularly appealing. Jake, I will walk you back toward the tents. If you'd like to accompany me all the way to the cafeteria, I'm sure the girls wouldn't mind the company."

They both turn toward you, Jake just in time to miss the grateful glance Jade throws your way, and you fix him with the stern do-not-argue-with-me look you've learned works better on him than Roxy. Your patience is quickly wearing thin, and if this continues you dink think you'll be held accountable for your own actions.

Rather than argue for a cause he knows he's already lost, Jake turns the tail-end of his water-logged scowl on you and nods a little. "I suppose I should see how the girls are fairin'—" he starts, and then nearly face-plants in the mud when Jade shoves him hard from behind. "What in seven hells what _that_ for?"

She waves a hand over her shoulder, already turning away toward the group at the edge of the clearing. "You weren't moving fast enough!"

Jake opens his mouth to shout something back, but you know their fighting has gone on long enough. If you let them keep this up, one or the other will say something they regret, and it's been too long a day for their bickering to continue without consequence. Instead, you put your hand back on Jake's arm and begin steering him away from his cousin, toward the main campus buildings. He huffs, clearly unhappy with being sent away, but doesn't fight you. You doubt he would dare even if he weren't so tired.

Jake stews in silence as you walk, fuming quietly beside you. There isn't much you can say because you're at the end of your nerves, too, and you doubt you'll be able to do any real sort of reasoning with him. He's worn out and angry, and you understand that. (You're not sure whether or not it's the mother in you, but you can't decide whether you want to wrap him up and tell him everything will be alright or smack him upside the head for acting like a baby when the rest of you are hurting, too.)

After a while, you finally do hear a quiet voice mutter, "She treats me like a child," and can't quite tell who he's talking to—you or himself.

"You're sixteen, Jake."

"And _she's_ twenty-three! I doubt she has all the universal mysteries figured out, either!" he replies, voice rising slightly as he throws his arms in the air. "Age doesn't have anythin' to do with anythin' in a world where fourteen-year-olds sleep with rifles at their bedsides."

You shoot him a look at that, the urge to smack him suddenly overriding any fleeting maternal instinct you might've held, but instead you purse your lips and say, "Jade wants what's best for you, nothing less."

"And keepin' me trapped here is what's _best_ for me? I've been around all this—" he throws his arms out then, gesturing out through the rain, "—just as long as she has, and I'm just as good with a weapon!" It occurs to you then that this isn't _just_ about being sent back to the tents—this is so, so much bigger. And _hell_ , you wish he had waited a little bit longer to let it all out, because although you've been waiting for this particular conversation to happen since the day you first met you're not sure you can remember all the things you had planned to tell him. 

"I highly doubt skill in combat has anything to do with it," you say, "you and I both know you're one of the best fighters here—"

"But _Jade_ doesn't," he scoffs, and you don't think you've ever heard him sound quite so resentful before. You can see, when you glance at him, that his expression has turned darker and angrier than you've witnessed in a while. He loves his cousin, you know—you've observed their unspoken affection in how much he frets over her while she's gone and his poorly-masked concern whenever she returns. But you can't help but wonder how far their relationship will stretch before he starts resenting her more than he cares.

"Don't be petty, Jake. Of course she knows. She would never put as much trust and responsibility in someone she thought incapable."

"I'm never allowed to _leave_!"

"She doesn't want you hurt. You've been outside, you _know_ how dangerous it is out there. You can do more here than you can out in the wilderness."

" _Horseshit_ ," he hisses, "She doesn't trust me, then—that's what it is. She doesn't _trust me_."

"Really, Jake. Are you listening to yourself? You know and I both know that couldn't be anything farther from the truth."

"The _truth?_ " he laughs, bitter and exhausted and loud, so unlike his usual carefree self. "I wouldn't trust _me_ either, you know."

"Jake—"

"You know who my father was, and look— _look_ at what he's done. I've got his blood in me. I'm bound to fuck everythin' up eventually."

" _Stop_ , Jake."

"I'm surprised you lot keep me around, really. Prevent it all before it happens and just—"

" _Jacob English,_ don't you _dare_ —"

" _No_ , do _not_ call me that—do _not_ —"

You can't help it, really. Your body moves on its own, and before you know it you're standing right in front of him, hand raised, and everything is silent except for the rain. You're glaring up at him—glaring up at him _hard_ —and he's staring right back down at you with eyes so sad and tired you hardly even recognize them.

You don't know the whole story, just the pieces you've gotten over the past three years from Jade and John. They don't talk about it much—Jake's childhood—and Jake himself has never, never brought it up. The bits you do know tell you a tale that's far from happy, far from ideal, but Jake has never given any sort of indication that it bothers him much. You'd always credited Jade and John and Jane for that, but now you wonder how much was really genuine. How much he still hurts. You can't imagine the weight he carries on his shoulders, all thanks to someone he barely even knew. (Actually, you think, you really _can_.)

After a moment, you lower your hand. You hadn't struck him, no matter how much you wanted to. That wouldn't solve anything, not really. Stress brings out the worst in people, and today has certainly been a perfect breeding ground for it. Instead, you put your hands on either side of his face and make him look at you right in the eyes. He's easily a head taller than you, but he looks so, so young. So much like a child. Your heart breaks just a little bit more.

"Do not _ever_ ," you say quietly, "even remotely suggest what I believe you were about to insinuate if I am anywhere near you. Or far away from you. Or breathing the same air on earth as you. And even _after_ I've stopped breathing, I swear on all that is good in this world if I hear another word like that I will haunt you for decades."

You stare at each other in silence for a moment, standing stock-still in the pouring rain, and slowly Jake blinks, nods, relaxes. You wrap your arms around his broad shoulders for a moment, and when he curls around you all you can think is that it should be Jade he's hugging—or John or Jane—not you. But you know he'll never admit to them what he's said in a fit of anger and exhaustion. His leader, his best friend, his mentor—all people you know his pride won't let him confide any sort of fault to. So instead of pressing, you just hold him tight and don't let go.

* * *

When the fighting had finally ended and the cheers died down, John had divided up what teams he could and set to work organizing the framework for cleanup. You'd been adamant that Roxy stay out of harm's way as much as possible, despite being a major participant in the whole mess (something you're still not particularly happy about, no matter how grateful you are for her help), and John had readily agreed.

By then, the only people who had eaten within the last eighteen or so hours were members of Karkat's camp, so you had asked that your daughter be sent to work in the kitchens where she would be away from the gruesome corpses and on-edge refugees outside and in the buildings. Roxy had, of course, protested until her lungs ran out of air, fuming that she could take care of herself _just fine, and besides! Jane is gonna work in the Cabinet while you and Jade start doin' your thing out here so why do I have to get stuck inside?_

Eventually, you and John had been too tired to argue, so you'd agreed to let her help her Jane. Together, they'd spent more than enough time gathering supplies to protect the refugees cleaning up. Those who didn't already have gloves were given them, scrounged up from the sparse stash of spare clothing you kept holed up with the rest of your emergency supplies.

When you and Jade finally left the Cabinet with your fully-equipped procession in tow, the girls had set off toward the Cafeteria to set about preparing food for the entire camp. It didn't occur to you until later it would just be the two of them, because Feferi was busy helping Karkat manage the blood protocol countermeasures as workers began moving toward the showers and their rooms and tents. You doubt, though, that minded either of the girls much—and even if they did, neither said anything. This wouldn't be the first time they'd cooked for the camp on their own.

As you'd thought, Jake decides to stay with you rather than retreat to the safety and comfort of his tent, and when you make it to the dining hall you're met with the smell of food so good you feel your stomach roll on the verge of nausea. The building is warm and dry, and it's such a sensation shock that you have to pause in the doorway for a moment to take it all in. Jake nearly runs over you from behind, though, captured completely and totally by the peace and comfort waiting inside, and when you step aside to let him pass be practically runs toward the kitchens with an energy you didn't think he still had.

As you maneuver your way toward the curving hallway between the main seating area and the source of the smell, a surprised, high-pitched squeal erupts over the distant buzz of electrically heated oven coils and spoons scraping along the bottom of stirred pots. " _Jake!_ Put me down this instant!" You hear Jane yelp, followed immediately by a pair of high-and-low giggles. By the time you do make it around the corner, Jake has his smallest cousin trapped in a hug with her feet lifted at least six inches from the ground. His face is split into a beaming grin as he laughs, a perfectly constructed picture of carefree happiness so unlike what you'd seen just moments ago. (You wonder, suddenly, how many of his smiles are genuine.)

Roxy is behind them, clutching the long counter with one hand and a whisk in the other as she strains against doubling over at the force of her own snorting laughs. "Get her, Jakey! She's bein' too uptight and prissy and you gotta get her to loosen up some or I'm gonna _die_ in here!" she snickers, waving her kitchen tool and inadvertently flinging what looks like mashed potatoes in the process.

Jane tries to say something, but her voice is muffled by Jake's shirt and the only sound you catch is a sort of indignant, pained whine.

"What was that, missy?" Jake chuckles, "You'll have to speak up a bit." But whatever muffled threats Jane makes in reply are drowned out by your daughter's laughter, and it's so infectious that Jake joins in, too. From the doorway, you can't help but smile, and when Jake turns to beam at you doesn't give any indication that what happened earlier actually occurred. (You do see, however, that his arms are straining to hold his cousin up.) He throws a wink in your direction and says in an dramatically over-formal tone of voice, "Ms. Lalonde, as the most well-spoken bluestockin' in the room, do you think you might be able to translate for me? I'm afraid I don't speak _goober_ very well."

This, of course, nearly floors Roxy, who can barely breathe at this point anyway. But when she sees you, she lights up all the same. "Mom!"

While Jane continues to fume and flail, your daughter begins making her way across the room toward you at lightning speed. You glance back up at Jake with an expression that's softer than you intend, and say in the same ridiculous tone, "I must apologize, sir—my skills in that particular dialect are rather lacking."

He lets out a sigh that would put any self-respecting Shakespearean actor to shame and throws his head back, "Oh, a tragedy! I might never know what wisdom my dear, simple cousin could be tryin' to impart on my humble soul!"

Roxy reaches you, then, and starts to wrap her arms around your waist just as you stop her with a hand in her hair, "I'm soaking wet, love—that might not be the best idea," you say, and she struggles to pout around her giggles as you give her hair a rigorous ruffling.

(When you were younger, you used to wonder how much better your life would be if you'd made a different choice. You'd never regretted it, not really, but late at night when you couldn't sleep because of the screaming baby at your breast you'd ask yourself why.

_But then you would look down at her, at the tiny fuzz of barely-there blond hair and too-big, too-pathetic pink eyes and your heart would break—it would shatter into a million pieces—because in that moment you would be so overwhelmed with a kind of crushing affection your brain would just stop._

You would hate yourself, then, for ever wanting to go a single day without your girl, your Roxy, and when she finally calmed down you would sit and cry as quietly as you could without waking her up. You would cry because you hated yourself, and you hated your body, and you hated the universe. And you would cry because you never thought you could love another person as much as you loved the helpless, pale little thing in your arms.)

" _Mo-om!_ " Roxy whines, immediately combing her fingers though her hair, trying to flatten back down the damp strands you'd managed to fluff up rather well. "Not cool at all!"

"On the contrary, love, I think you look rather radical," you smirk, and all that gets you in return is a stuck-out tongue from your daughter. You definitely do _not_ retaliate, because you are a mature adult and mature adults definitely don't stick out their tongues at children. Definitely. "And Jake, you're just as sopping as I am—your poor cousin is probably more than a little damp herself, by now."

Jake huffs, but sets Jane's feet back down onto the floor anyway. The moment she can breathe again, she starts glowering around at all of you, and sets right to work straightening out her rumpled apron. "Jake, that was absolutely uncalled for," she huffs, "We are trying to _work_ in here, darn it!" Sure enough, her stained apron is dark and wet straight down the front where she'd been pressed right up against her cousin's chest, and there's a black smear down the side where some of the blood still covering the both of you had rubbed off onto her.

As you watch, Jake's brows furrow, "Shitknickers, Jane—I do apologize. I didn't even think about that happenin'."

She sighs again and shakes her head, rolling her eyes behind her glasses, "Oh, it's alright. It won't kill me," she says, reaching behind her to undo the knot on her apron strings. "No harm done, see?"

Roxy, in the meantime, has moved back toward the long, eight-burner electric stove along the wall. It's covered almost completely by just as many miss-matched stainless steel stockpots filled to the brim with what looks even more appetizing than usual.

Neither of the girls are tall enough to see over the brims of the massive things, so along the bottom of the stove is a wooden stepping bench Jake built for them back when he and the others had first arrived. The kitchen itself is massive, but only three-fourths of its many appliances are still fully operational. Anything broken or worn beyond use is being used for storage, but glancing around now you can see that most of the surfaces usually stacked with non-perishables and piles of garden-grown vegetables are bare. You'll need to speak with John about that at some point, you think.

Suddenly, there's a knock on the doorway behind you, and you all kind of jump a little, Roxy nearly falling off the stool in the process. Jane reaches out an arm to steady her just as you step forward, but she waves her friend away with a small whine.

When you're sure she's alright, you finally do turn around and find yourself facing one of the last people you expected to see.

"Kankri?"

When you'd all gone your separate ways earlier in the day, you had sent the older Vantas to help John in the Infirmary. With Tavros out of commission and a steady flow of injured refugees to take care of, you knew he would need the help. Now, though, you feel your stomach drop—because you can't think of any reason _Kankri_ of all people would abandon his post.

"I apologize for interrupting," he says, nodding in your direction, "but Miss Harley informed me that you had come this way."

You purse your lips, "Yes, I can see that. Is something wrong?"

The young man opens his mouth for a moment, about to speak, but after glancing around the room he closes it again. By now, you can assume that Roxy, Jane, and Jake all have their eyes on him as well, and he swallows. You've never known Kankri Vantas to be a nervous man—or a quiet one, for that matter—and your unease grows. "May I speak with you alone for a moment?"

"Yes, of course," you reply, and he steps aside immediately to let you through the doorway first. You're not willing to head back out into the rain, but to avoid prying ears you move as close as possible to the closed Cafeteria doors before motioning Kankri on.

He clears his throat, "John has dismissed me back to the dormitory, but I fear he is not in any condition to be left alone. He would hear no complaints from me, however, so I thought it best to inform you. Though he refuses to admit so, he is badly injured." Kankri shifts from one foot to the other, glancing back toward the direction of the kitchen.

"His wrist?"

Kankri nods, sighing, "It seems whatever damage it sustained today has exponentially exacerbated the previous problem."

You sigh too, then, and nod as well. "Thank you for telling me. I will see to it that he has help, whether he welcomes it or not. Now, I must agree with John—return to your room and rest."

Kankri looks for a moment like he's about to protest, but thinks better of it and nods."If there is anything else in regards to which you should require my assistance, please do not hesitate to find me." You thank him again, and after another moment his back disappears into the downpour just as the door shuts behind him.

When you make it back to the kitchens, Roxy, Jane, and Jake are all huddled around the doorway, all looking too guilty not to have been listening in on your conversation. "I suppose I don't have to let any of you know what that was about." Jake is the only one who shakes his head, while Jane looks more than ready to yell at someone. Or hit them with a spoon.

"I can't believe it! He's going to drop dead one of these days, I swear it. Roxy, can you stay—"

You hold up your hand, "No," and both Jane and Roxy—who had already been nodding solemnly—turn to look at you.

"No, what?" Jane gives you a look that's somewhere between _do-not-tell-me-what-to-do-I-am-going-to-go-knock-some-sense-into-my-stupid-brother_ and _frigging-heck-I'm-tired-and-my-brother-should-be-old-enough-to-take-care-of-himself-what-could-you-possibly-want_ , and you cross your arms.

"I need you to stay here and finish preparing meals. No one has eaten today, and I doubt anyone will be coming to dinner later this evening. By then, most of the committees will have finished their assigned tasks, and the first thing on their minds will be rest. Cold weather, rain, and a lack of nutrition are a dangerous combination, and we will have to feed as many people as we can before the day is over. What that means, however, is that the food needs to be finished before the entire camp passes out for the night. We'll be delivering meals directly to everyone's rooms, and I have found it is much easier to get someone's attention when he or she is awake."

Jane blows a puff of air out through her nose and looks as though she really _is_ about to begin a tirade, but Roxy puts a hand on her best friend's shoulder. "Mom has a point. I mean, I'd totally stay here and slay the stoves while you're off kickin' your hot bro's dumb butt, but things would definitely go _way_ faster if you were workin' your culinary kitchen magics here with me." They share a look, and after a moment Jane sighs.

"Alright, fine," she says, before turning back to you. "But you'd better follow through on what you told Kankri. Make sure the oaf has help."

"Of course."

* * *

You leave Jane and Roxy to their work a few minutes later, Jake in tow, and begin making your way back toward the residential areas to find Feferi and Karkat. As more and more people return from cleanup—Equius and Nepeta's group, the squad Meenah and Horuss had been leading to find stray weaponry left in the surrounding woods, and Horuss's team left with the task of reorganizing the armory—the piles of blood-stained clothing heaped outside of rooms and tents for collection were steadily growing. Blood protocol usually only applied to a small group of people, scouts returning from off-grounds missions. It had been quite some time since the operation was carried out on such a mass scale.

Infected blood, like snake venom or skunk spray, remains lethal long after its source has met the end of a bullet or blade. It's not magic or cursed—it's science. And it's very, very dangerous. Although miniscule exposure isn't enough to completely Turn someone, even small amounts can be deadly in their own ways. From what John has told you and what you've read in his notes, the toxicity of Infected blood doesn't decrease when mixed with water, and the only effect soap has is moving it to another place. Disinfectant is useless.

Normally, you would clean the blood-soaked clothes of returning scouts in wash bins, but the sheer amount of fabric you would have to scrub after today would be too much to handle, too impractical. Fresh water is scarce enough, and it would take days to soak every article of clothing left out for collection. You can't use the river, either—in doing so, you would run the risk of contaminating your water supply. The only solution you have, then, is to burn the clothes alongside the Infected.

When you finally do find Feferi, she seems to have everything relatively under control. She and several other members of the general care team are busy at work, gathering piles of clothing and used towels to haul toward the Markeryard. Karkat, however, is nowhere in sight.

You follow through on your promise to Jane, though, and gather up a few of Feferi's team to visit John one at a time in shifts. You tell them not to leave until their allotted time is up, even if he argues. They're more than willing to help, and Feferi is more than willing to let you take them.

(Although you'd all seen John in combat training and spars, very few outside of the group he'd arrived with three years ago had actually seen him _fight_. But today, nearly everyone witnessed it. From what Jade had told you, he'd been on the front lines for most of the battle, taking down more creatures than she or anyone else could count, all while leading with a tactical eye. And you'd watched him, too, when he had come back to deal with what managed to slip around the front forces. There were just a few of you fighting, horrifically outnumbered and out of your element, but he had come with the others to reign hell on those who threatened you. And he had saved _your_ life at least a dozen times as the two of you fought back-to-back, side-by-side.

Whether he believed it or not, he was truly meant to lead.)

Jake, meanwhile, does finally leave to rest. You send him back toward his and Jade's shared tent with a hand on the shoulder and a meaningful look, and he flashes you a smile that you don't quite understand before wandering off through the rain.

After that, you leave Feferi and her team to work, and make a pass by your own room to change before beginning your next task. You still share a room with Roxy, the same faculty dorm you've had since you first moved to the University a lifetime ago, and not much is changed. (Sometimes, you'll find yourself standing in the middle of it, glancing at the alarm clock on your bedside table to make sure you're not late for your next class, and every time that happens you'll tell yourself you're going to rearrange something, change it somehow so you don't feel so lost. You never do.)

You don't spend much time cleaning yourself up, because you know you'll being going back outside soon anyway. Less than fifteen minutes after you leave Feferi, you're walking back through the halls, knocking gently on doors to check on everyone who has made it back already. Some are passed out, exhausted, but you stay and chat with the ones who aren't, just to make sure they're okay. Whether they were part of the fighting or not, everything that happened was terrifying, and everyone had been affected in some way. You take the time to calm down those who are crying, reassure those who are fearful, and gently wake those who are already having nightmares.

You're not sure how much time has passed when you finish making your way through all four floors of the dormitory, but the sky doesn't look any different than it did hours before as you step outside. It's still raining and dark, cold and windy. Your stomach growls, but you keep moving forward.

By the time you make it to Jade and Jake's tent, almost everyone has to their respective rooms, but you're surprised to find theirs completely empty. You fret for a moment, wondering if Jade is still out working and where Jake could be if he'd left your company hours before, but before you can do anything about it your phone beeps.

— twinArmegaddons [TA] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 18:46 —

TA: head2 up kk ii2 calliing an exec meetiing.

TA: he 2eem2 2uper pii22ed.

TA: or at lea2t he2 actiing liike more of an iignorant fuckwad than u2ual.

TT: Hello, Sollux.

TA: 2up.

TT: It's been a stressful day for all of us. I believe Karkat is entitled to a little bit of anger.

TA: ii diidnt me22age two argue about the fiiner poiint2 of kks iin2ufferable character.

TA: iim ju2t pa22iing along the me22age.

TA: my 2ugge2tiion would be two come over a2 2oon a2 you can.

TT: I will see you in a few moments, then. Thank you for letting me know.

— tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering twinArmegaddons [TA] at 18:51 — 

You sigh, locking your phone, and sweep one last look over the vacant tent. Perhaps, you think, your worries were unfounded.

* * *

The library is relatively quiet, and when you make it to the meeting room where everyone else should be waiting, you discover that you're one of the first to arrive. Sollux, as usual, is hunched behind his cocoon of computer monitors and wires, and he doesn't even look up when he asks you to _pleathe remove your bootth_. Jane is already waiting at the long table, swinging her legs and fidgeting enough to make it very clear that she doesn't want to be here—not one bit. You frown, because if she's here then Roxy is in the kitchens alone, but you know she doesn't have much of a choice when it comes to things like this so you don't say anything. 

She greets you with a tired smile and wave, but when you take your seat she sighs. "How long do you think this will take?"

"I don't know. Sollux wasn't particularly revealing as to the details of this meeting," you reply, glancing over toward the black-haired mess in the corner. He doesn't bother looking at you, but he shrugs all the same. Helpful. Instead of arguing, though, you turn back to Jane. "How are things going?"

"We're nearly finished. All that's left is to portion out meals for distribution, which I believe Roxy and Cronus are doing now." You raise your eyebrows at that, butt Jane just shrugs. "I saw him on my way over and asked if he would help. "

The two of you chat for a few moments, and it's not long before the main building door suddenly opens and John appears in the doorway. You blink, not really recognizing him at first, and looking at him you think Kankri might have grossly understated his assessment of John's condition.

Your young leader normally stands just over six feet tall, broad shouldered and strong, but now he's tilted to one side, sagging like he can't quite keep his balance. His hair, damp and muddy like he hadn't bothered to clean up after the fight (which, now that you think about it, he probably didn't) is matted down over his face, tangled in the frames of his glasses in some places. Even from this distance, you can see the bags under his eyes. You can tell just by looking at him that he's soaked completely to the bone, clothes plastered to his body like a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, and the mud on his legs is caked halfway up his shins.

The thing that catches your attention most, though, is the bandage wrapped tight around his right wrist and hand. His fingers look swollen, and there's a purple-blue tint peeking up from under the gauze along the base of his thumb. The whole thing hangs limply at his side, barely moving even when he comes stomping into the room. Jane makes a kind of quiet, pained noise at your side, and when you glance up at John's face you can see his brow is scrunched up and he's giving his sister a look that says _I'm fine stop worrying I'm your older brother for fucks sake you can't baby me shut up_ without any real venom.

"Before you take one thtep into thith room, take off thothe goddamn hathardths thtrapped to your feet and roll up your pantths or thomething. I won't have you fucking up my equipment," Sollux calls with a split-second glare in John's direction. Sure enough, there's a trail of dirt and grime leading out the door behind him, and his expression twists as he glances back, hesitant and unsure and resigned and in pain.

As you watch, John crouches down to begin the slow-going task of untying his mud-caked boot with one hand. It only takes you a moment to stand, but before you can cross the room to help him he's already waving you off.

A few tense moments pass before he finally gives up and begins using both hands to undo the knots, but by then you're already ignore his protests and kneeling down in front of him. "You shouldn't be using that," you say, finishing off the strings in less than a fraction of the time he'd been struggling.

"I'm fine."

You glance up at him to raise your eyebrows—to give him a _look_ —but he's not watching you. Instead, he's still fixed almost completely on the task of rolling up his pants leg as you move on to the other boot. His teeth are gritted, but he's not using both hands.

When you both finally stand, John knocks your shoulder with a quiet _thanks_ before moving toward one of the empty seats. Seconds later, the main library door slam down the hallway, followed immediately by the sound of thundering footsteps. In the blink of an eye, Karkat is standing in the doorway, followed closely by Jade and Nepeta.

"Excellent, I'm so glad you pathetic piles of shit finally decided to bless our sorry asses with your carbon dioxide waste. Now we can finally get these bullshit festivities in full swing," Karkat yells, and you see John roll his eyes as the girls take their seats.

"Bullshit festivities, my favorite," he says, and Karkat glares hard across the table. Everyone is exhausted and sore, and you get the feeling that if things are starting off _this_ well they'll only be getting better.

And you are _not_ in the mood for a fist fight.

"Boys, please. Karkat—you called this meeting for a reason. Perhaps we should address that before we launch into personal attacks. If you're both still in the mood to kill one another after the rest of us have been dismissed, you know where the training grounds are," you lean forward in your chair, crossing your hands on the table and daring them to argue.

Karkat huffs, puffing out his chest like he's going to say something, but rather than explode he takes his seat and continues scowling in every direction. "Fine. Whatever," he says. "Sollux, pull up a map or something."

John nods too, then, still watching Karkat warily but looking less and less inclined to expend the energy an argument would require every second.

The wall-mounted television flicker on, showing the same program you'd used thousands of times before. It's centered right on your location, just west of Lake Shannon, covered in little dots and makers to show various mission points and red zones. "Pull it out to, like, a fifty mile radius. No—two. Make it twice that," John says, and the clicking from Sollux's corner starts up again as the map zooms out, dipping past the western coast of Washington state on one side, all the way down to Seattle. The rest of the screen is taken up mostly by national parks, the undeveloped greenlands and mountains that have kept you safe for so many years

Jane's eyebrows shoot up at that. "A hundred miles?"

"We run perimeter checks out almost half that far one a semi-regular basis," he says, and then pauses with a look toward Jade who nods in confirmation. "So we know what happened today wasn't a local thing. Or, you know, sort of local. But we need to figure out where they came from. The best way to do that is to factor in all the stuff that make a spot safe for a group like that to survive."

Nepeta waves her free hand, then, and looks solemn when she finally does speak. "Climate, altitude, former population, wildlife—stuff like that."

Jade nods again, staring hard at the map now, "We can probably rule out the east. There's never been much activity that way, 'cause there are too many trees and not enough meat. They wouldn't survive very long out there, I think."

"That leaves the west coast, then," you say, but Jade shakes her head.

"Maybe, but we've been up and down through Bellingham and Mount Vernon and Everett all the way down so many times that there's no way we would have completely missed a group that big."

"Based on my understanding, however, no one has been to Seattle in quite some time."

"We generally try to avoid it, yeah. But even if they _had_ come from there, that doesn't explain how they _found_ us."

There's a moment of silence, the only sounds a dull clicking of keyboard keys from Sollux's corner of the room, and Jane sighs beside you. Jade's statement sinks in slowly, and you all stare at your hands, worried and exhausted and not thinking as well as you should be because of it.

"They followed you idiotth."

All at once, every head turns toward Sollux in the back of the room, but he waves your collective attention back toward the screen as he continues typing with one hand.

Jade shakes her head. "We haven't been anywhere _near_ Seattle in months, there's no way they could have followed us!"

"Not Theattle—"

"—from Laramie."

John is the one who says it, strained and quiet and serious. And when you look over toward him, he's gone pale.

Sollux continues on, unfazed by the interruption. "Yeah, good call geniuth. Look—" the map zooms out, then, and soon you're all staring at an uneven, highlighted line trailing from your location now, the University, to some tiny dot in the southern corner of Wyoming. "—it'th roughly twelve hundred mileth from here back to where you were. If the group broke off and thtarted heading after you at, thay, average running thpeed, it'd take them thomewhere between eighty to a hundred hourth to get here. Factor in thleeping during the day, and that'th pretty damn clothe to theven dayth."

"Average running speed?" Jane asks, glancing back and forth between her brother and Sollux.

"Fourteen to twenty mileth per hour."

"There's no way anyone could run that fast—not normally—and _especially_ not for that long."

Instead of answering directly, Sollux leans up over his screens and nods toward Nepeta. "NP, what'th your average thpeed?"

She blinks for a second, but shrugs. "I don't know—I never really thought it mattered."

John, however, speaks up. "The fastest you've made it during physicals is thirty-nine, but that's sprinting. You broke the treadmill, remember? I had to get Eq to rebuild the whole thing so it could handle you." His voice sounds hollow, a little mechanical, like he's just reciting facts without actually processing them—like something's wrong. "I'd say your average endurance speed would fall, like, maybe somewhere near what he's saying."

"My word," Jane says quietly, and Sollux just nods.

Karkat's lips are set in a fine line, and only when he speaks do you realize that he's been strangely silent for the past few minutes. "I fucking told you, John. I said it was a bad idea."

There's a beat of silence, and in that moment you're not sure whether John wants to reach across the table and punch his best friend or leave the room because his expression is still heartbreakingly slack. He does neither, though. Instead, he just sort of nods, not really looking at anything, and says, "I know."

"You _know_? They followed the trucks—those screaming metal death traps you were so _sure_ would work. Their screeching is only comparable to the fucking _smell_ they give off," he's yelling now, not louder than usual but as you watch his words cut through the air you start to see John visibly shrink. "This whole fucking shitstorm was all for what? Two dead kids, a drug addict, a crazy woman, and some blind girl?"

"Vriska isn't crazy," John sighs, voice tight, "and the Striders aren't _dead_."

Karkat's expression hardens, then, "They might as well be."

Beside you, Jane sucks in a breath, and when she speaks her voice is suddenly very quiet. "What do you mean?"

John shakes his head. "Dirk's awake—for real this time. He's _fine_ ," he turns to look at Karkat, then. " _He's fine_."

"Puking up black shit isn't _fine,_ " Karkat replies, and he throws his hands up like he can't believe what he's hearing, "His skin, his hair, his eyes—that's not _fine_ either."

"Dirk's awake?" Jane perks up, brows still furrowed.

Jade sits back in her chair, silent, and the two of you exchange a look. There's something you're missing—something big. But neither of you are willing to ask because the minute you do, you think you might set off either of the boys. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Nepeta take Karkat's hand and squeeze it.

"Yeah," John nods, "He asked about his friends. He seemed—I don't know—relaxed but, like, exhausted. Which you can probably expect. And I don't think he expected his brother to still be alive."

Karkat sighs, voice still loud but suddenly too serious. "You have to make a decision, John."

Jane keeps looking back and forth between them, unsure just like the rest of you of what's really going on but the only one willing to actually ask the question. "A decision about _what_?"

The boys ignore her, though, for the most part. John shoots her a look like he wants to tell her to leave, please Jane, you don't need to hear this, but he doesn't.

"I _have_ ," he says instead, turning back to Karkat. "I'll keep an eye on Dirk, make sure nothing happens, and Dave—" his words cut off as he swallows suddenly, and when picks up again his words are so much quieter. "If he doesn't wake up in the next few days, I don't think—I don't think I'll have to make a decision at all."

You sit in silence for a few moments after that, not really sure what to do or say. John rubs at his face with his left hand, completely drained, and you're just about to ask Karkat if you can _go_ because _everyone needs to rest_ when there's a knock on the door and you all kind of jump. John's demeanor changes in an instant—his back straightens and his face crinkles up like he's about to smile (even though he doesn't not really, because at this point you're not sure he actually remembers how).

"Come in!" he calls, not exactly cheerful but certainly not as lost as he'd sounded just moments before.

You wonder, then, fleetingly, if anyone you know is ever genuine with their feelings, or if they're always hiding themselves away. As a leader, you know John has to be strong—he can't break, because the minute its foundation starts to crack the entire building starts to crumble—but you wish on some level he wouldn't be so afraid to show when he's hurting. You wonder if he and Jake are ever honest with anyone about what's going through their head. You wonder if they're honest with themselves.

The door creaks open a fraction and Roxy pokes her little blond head it to squint at you all, before disappearing again. You blink, not really sure what just happened, but before you can say anything you hear her voice call down the hall, "There's seven of 'em!"

Cronus's voice echoes back, "You got it, doll!" and then Roxy reappears, beaming.

"Dinner's comin'!" she says, and immediately there's a quiet _hell fucking yeth_ from Sollux's corner of the room. Roxy laughs, and suddenly it's like all the tension is sucked out of the room. Karkat rolls his eyes, Jane snorts, and John lets out this kind of breathy chuckle that somehow lifts everyone's spirits up six inches off the ground. For a moment, you're almost completely overwhelmed by a need to crush your daughter in a hug because only _she_ could do something like that—take a room full of people ready to kill each other and cry all at the same time and make them _smile_. Only Roxy.

But you don't.

Instead, you watch as Jane starts fussing, going on about how she's sorry she wasn't there to help, is there anything she can do? And you both stand, bustling out to the hallway just in time to see Cronus re-enter the building with a tray of plates piled high with what looks like some of the best food you've seen in quite a while. (Although that could be because you're starving, more so than you thought.) Your stomach growls and Roxy laughs, and then you really do pull her close.

Jane rushes forward to take some of load from Cronus, and you realize then—watching them through the open door—that the rain has finally stopped.

* * *

Roxy and Cronus don't stay long. Your little group is the first in a long line of people who hadn't shown up for dinner, like you had predicted, so the two of them leave after a bout of fleeting chatter to continue on their rounds.

After that, though, conversation lightens somewhat as you discuss final cleanup plans, repairs, and increased security measures around mouthfuls of food.

When you finally broach the subject of a supply venture, you aren't met with much resistance. Jade nods, humming around her fork. "Yeah, we're gonna have to track down ammo, too. Between today and the run down to Laramie last week, we're down to almost half our stock."

With a resigned sigh, John agrees. "I'll write up a master list of everything I need in the Infirmary, along with anything you guys—" he waves his left hand toward you and Jane "—need for the kitchens. And like you said, Rose—we're going to need clothes and stuff, too. To make up for everything we're burning."

"This is gonna be a super duper big run," Nepeta adds. "I guess we're taking the whole team?"

Before Jade can say anything, though, you lean forward slightly and cross your fingers in front of you on the table. "Actually, I would like to make a suggestion."

Everyone blinks, and John waves you on. "Shoot," he says. So you do.

"I think it would be beneficial if Jake took the lead on this mission."

The reaction is just about what you had expected.

Jade is on her feet in an instant, practically hissing at you, "Absolutely _not_ ," but you hold your ground and stay seated.

"He has the necessary experience, and has been—"

"I don't _care_ ," her voice is deadly, both hands pressed flat on the table as she leans toward you, "about his _experience_. My answer is no, and that's final."

There's a pause as everyone stays frozen, not quite sure what one of the most dangerous people in the room is going to do next. She's glaring daggers at you, like you've just suggested she kill Jake with her own two hands. (Which you think, maybe from her perspective, you have.)

Nepeta is the one who moves first, though, slowly standing to put a hand on Jade's shoulder. "Jake's, like, sixteen now. And he's been asking to go out with us for _years_. I'm with Kitty's mom over there on this one. It's about time he takes the lead on something that isn't just, you know, the morning security regimen."

Jade's glare turns on her and she shakes off Nepeta's hand, "It's dangerous and he's needed _here_. John—" she looks to her cousin, then, "this is ridiculous."

But John shakes his head. "You saw him out there, Jade. He's just as capable as the rest of us under pressure, and what happened today is more than what he'd have to deal with on an average supply run—" Jade makes an angry noise and slams a hand on the table, but John continues. "And after all this, I'm not sure how much safer he would be here than anywhere else. The best he can do is get back in the swing of, you know, real combat."

" _No._ "

"You've gone on three missions in just as many months. You need a _break_ , Jade," he says voice gentle and firm and tired all at once. He turns to Nepeta, then. "And you, too."

The short-haired girl huffs, tilting her head to the side like she's about to argue, but Karkat catches her other hand without a word and she stops, blinking. "Yeah," she says finally. "Yeah."

Jade isn't having any part of it, though. " _My answer is no_."

"And my answer is _yes_ ," John counters, finally standing up to face his cousin. At his full height, he towers over her by nearly a foot, but Jade doesn't so much as blink. A moment passes and no one in the room lets out a breath, you think—because only when Jade finally does move to you realize you'd been holding yours.

"I _hate_ you," she hisses, quiet and deadly and so sincere you think you can see the exact moment John's heart breaks as she turns her back to leave the room. 

* * *

The meeting disbands soon after that, quickly and quietly without much fanfare. The sun has gone down by the time you step outside, but the night is devoid of any normal activity from Karkat's camp. The Cured leader himself trudges back toward his tent with Nepeta in tow as soon as they leave the library, not so much as glancing back with a goodbye before disappearing into the night. John sends Jane back toward the dorms after hugging her tight and planting a kiss on the top of her head, and after they part ways he moves back toward the Infirmary. You call after him, telling him to  _go some sleep, for God's sake_ , and he waves a hand at you over his shoulder without really answering.

Sollux stays behind in the library, where he spends nearly all of his time. Like John and Tavros, he sleeps in where he works, constantly on alert, monitoring all of your systems should anything go wrong.

You walk back toward the dormitory building alongside Jane, who stays quiet the entire way. She hasn't said much since Jade walked out, and you don't try to pry. You know she hates seeing her family fight—you all do—and you wish, sometimes, that the three of them would all just learn to get along for her sake.

When you finally stop outside of the room she and Kankri share, you pull her into a tight hug and kiss her head, just like her brother did, and wish her a good night. Sometimes it's easy to forget that she's not your daughter, too. And sometimes you just ignore the fact that she's not, because it doesn't really matter much, does it?

She hugs you tight in return, fingers digging into the back of your jacket, and without hesitation you ask if she wants to spend the night with you and Roxy instead. She nods into your shirt and for a moment seems so, so much younger than seventeen. Today has been a humbling day for all of you.

When you step inside your room, you find Roxy sprawled out across her bed, snoring softly and dead to the world. Almost immediately, Jane collapses next to her, and when you offer her your own mattress she just shakes her head and pulls an extra blanket on top of herself. Already, you can see her eyes closing.

You're not going to sleep yet—no, you still have one more thing to do—but you wait until Jane finally falls asleep to venture back out into the darkness. You're tired, you realize. So, so tired, but mothers can't rest until their babies are safely tucked away.

And one is still missing.

* * *

The Cabinet is almost completely dark, save for the light coming out from underneath the armory's door. You knew she would be here—whenever she's upset, this is the place she almost always holes herself up. 

When you step into the giant concrete room, she's sitting with her back to you at one of the long tables, bits and pieces of metal spread out across the length of the whole thing in front of her. She doesn't turn around, but her shoulders tense at the sound of someone opening the door.

"Go away, John," she says, and even though her voice is quiet it echoes against the walls.

"Unfortunately for you, I would rather not," you reply, and she jumps slightly, jerking her head around halfway at the sound of your voice. Her long, black hair is matted and her bright green eyes are dull and tired—and if you didn't know her better you might wonder if she had been crying. But you don't wonder, because you _do_ know better. Jade Harley doesn't cry.

"Oh—hey, Rose," she turns back around, and you take the fact that she doesn't tell you to get out as a good sign. Carefully, you begin making your way toward her, picking across empty ammunition boxes, a few small broken blades, and a few dented rifles that haven't yet been shelved.

Standing behind her, you have a better view of what she's doing at the table, and you sigh. Scattered out in front of her are the inner workings of her dismantled M1, along with at least two other guns, all completely pulled apart at every seam. As you watch, she carefully picks up a small metal sliver and begins rubbing it down with an oiled rag, gently and slowly like she's afraid she'll break it (even though both of you know she won't, because she's done this too many times to mess up like that.)

And then you see her hand.

"Am I allowed to ask what happened?" you say, but the tone of your voice isn't really a question. 

She pauses, glancing back at you like she's not really sure what you're talking about, and blinks. "This?" She looks down at her left hand, haphazardly wrapped in red-stained gauze around the knuckles, and blinks again. "Oh. I, um. I punched a tree."

"I see. I must offer my condolences to its neighbors, then."

Jade snorts and you count that as a win. You don't quite get a smile out of her, but at the very least she turns to around to face you. "It survived, don't worry," she says. "I think _I_ got the bad end of the deal."

You hum, nodding, "This is why we have sandbags, you know," and begin to make your way around the table to sit across from her. She turns back around as you move.

"The tree was closer."

For a while after that, the two of you sit in relative silence, a peace only broken by the quiet clicks and squeaks as Jade cleans the inner workings of her constant companion. You don't push her—you've learned by now that she's too stubborn to speak when pressed. So you wait, tired but content, for her to say what she needs to if she even feels like talking at all.

You don't know how much time passes before she does eventually speak, but she's already on the third rifle when she begins, quiet and vulnerable and sounding so unlike herself you have to look up at her face to remind your tired mind who you're sitting in front of.

"I don't remember my parents, you know," she says. "I was seven when they died, so I should be able to. I think so, at least. I think when you're seven, you should be able to remember stuff like that. But I don't. And I don't remember my aunt, either—John's mom. I was even smaller when she died, though, so that's probably okay." She pauses. "Were you close with your mom?"

You nod, humming. "We only had each other, so I suppose it made sense for us to form some kind of bond when we were together. She rarely stayed in one place at a time, though."

And Jade gives you a small smile in return. "She sounds a lot like my grandparents. I think they did an okay job with me and Jake, even if they were always going somewhere new. Just like your mom did a good job raising you."

"Do you miss your grandparents?"

"Do you miss your mom?"

You smile too, then. "I do, yes. I suppose that's a fair enough answer."

There's another drop in conversation, then, as Jade continues working and you continue watching her. You're nearly dozing off in your seat when she speaks up again. "What would you do if something happened to Roxy?"

The question catches you off guard, and at first you're not sure how to respond. So you just sort of sit there, mind half-muggy but still thinking, and realize you _can't_. You can't think about that. So you answer honestly. "I don't know," you say, and your voice is so much quieter than you intend. "I don't know." Because you really don't. You don't know if you'd be angry or sad or if you'd feel nothing at all. Because if something happened to Roxy, you'd lose your whole world, and that's not something people just _come back_ from.

"I don't know, either. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to Jake," Jade says quietly. "It's my fault, you know—all this bad stuff."

"That couldn't be farther from the truth. You can't control what course the universe choices to take, it simply goes on without listening to us. What occurred today, that is no one's fault. Not yours or John's—neither of could have known the trucks would attract that much attention."

But Jade shakes her head, "Everyone around me dies," she says, and her voice cracks in a way you've never heard it before. "Everyone around me _dies_. It's because of me, Rose. The Harley curse, like my Grandma said."

And as you watch, the strongest woman you've ever met begins to crumble.

"John's mom, Jake's dad, my parents... Grandpa Harley and Grandma and _John's dad_. It's all my fault. Everyone I decide to love _dies_."

In the next instant, you're kneeling on the floor next to her chair and she's wrapping her arms around your shoulders, and some distant part of your mind wonders how many hugs you've given today. And how many hugs you've given to this family in particular. (But that same part of your mind reminds you that they're not just _this_ family—they're _your_ family. And they have been since the day you met.) 

"No one has died in a very long time, Jade. No one died today, when any one of us very easily could've. You helped keep us safe, just as you always have, just as you always will."

"No one's died _yet_ , which means someone will _soon._ I know it, Rose. I know it." She's crying, now. Really crying. Her glasses are digging into your shoulder and you think some of her hair is in your mouth but you don't care, you just hold her and shoosh her and tell her that everyone is fine, that Jake will be fine, because she taught him how to take care of himself and he's a survivor just like her.

When she finally falls asleep, you're both laying on the cold concrete floor, tired and sad and sore from one of the worst days you've ever had to live through, and all you can do is hope you haven't made empty promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this??? An update??? Yes, well, I'm just as shocked as you guys.  
> I had so, so much trouble writing this chapter (just ask the 23k words of draft work I have sitting on-file), and as a result I lost a lot of my motivation to continue. But!! After taking some time to focus on work and school (I'm a graduate now!), I can say with confidence that Freight is back and here to stay. 
> 
> I'd really like to thank everyone who has sent me wonderful, encouraging messages over the last couple of months! You guys have really helped me stay motivated and passionate about this story!! And a special shout out (as usual) goes to my absolutely adorable beta reader [Clara](http://jackfrostitution.tumblr.com)!
> 
> BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE.
> 
> Everyone should check out these amazing fanarts drawn by some really, really talented people! The wonderful and spectacular prospitpunk drew [**THIS AMAZING PIECE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/84984202197/prospitpunk-please-full-view-soooooo) of Dave kicking ass in chapter six; the fabulous and fantastic desmenn drew [**THIS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL PIECE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/78424394991/desmenn-submitted-a-really-tired-john-yeah) of John from chapter ten; and the wildly talented arsgratiaartisx drew [**THESE RADICAL PIECES**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/78716001077/arsgratiaartisx-bluh-the-sketch-on-the-left-is) which are awesome character sketches of John. Thank you so much, guys!! You're absolutely amazing and I'm still kind of _really freaking out_.
> 
> Remember!! I track the [**freightstuck**](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag on tumblr if you have anything you'd like to show me! And feel free to hit me up at [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/) if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to say hi! (There's also a [freightstuck master page](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/freightstuck) there if any of you are interested.)
> 
> Thank you so, so, so, so much for reading, guys!! Your support and love over the last ten months has really kept me going, and I owe you guys so much!! Much love to you all.


	12. Breathe a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for.

**[6/1/37]**

**== > BE THE HELPLESS MENTOR**

You can see Tavros staring at the ceiling, glassy-eyed and vacant, still as death but breathing all the same. It's been a day since he woke up—two since the attack—and you're wondering not for the first time if he should have just stayed unconscious, if that would have been better than _this_.

Or would it have been more merciful if he'd never opened his eyes at all.

It's been hours since he made any kind of sound, and you can only hope the poppy tea you'd given him earlier has started working. It's the closest thing you have to morphine—a home-grown substitute from Jade's greenhouse out by the river—and the only indication you have that anything about his condition has changed is that fact that he's finally stopped screaming. Even that isn't much of a reassurance.

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you haven't felt this useless in a long, long time. Because you can bandage cuts and flush out black poison and smash in skulls with your fists if you have to, but at the end of the day that's just tape to patch up whatever problem you're given. YOU CAN'T FIX ANYTHING, not really. And Tavros—even now, you don't know how bad things really are, only how bad they _might be_.

You're standing at his bedside, tucked away in one of the only cozy rooms in the enitre Infirmary building. It's been Tav's since you first moved here, after all, and from top to bottom it's decorated with the same trappings that had once covered his tent when you still lived on the campground so many years ago. It's not messy, though. Everything is neat, from the piles of papers and handwritten notes stacked on counters to books sorted alphabetically on shelves and the carefully tangled twine of whatever craft project he'd been working on last.

The walls, too, are lined with woven trinkets and feathers—remnants of a home left behind in the barren Lakota lands of South Dakota where he, Rufioh, Equius, and Horuss were born—hung over messy finger-painted designs you and the rest of your new family had helped create. Hand prints and smudgy animals and geometric patterns and a sunset and a night sky stretch from floor to ceiling in every space that had been a blank, antiseptic white when you'd arrived. (You remember laughing a lot that day, crammed into this emptied-out space with a more than dozen other people, each and every one of you colorful right down to the roots of your hair.)

A loud sneeze erupts through the silence, and you can't help but snap your gaze back down to the boy who looks too small, too skinny buried under stacks of white blankets. He hasn't moved, though. 

Instead, Gamzee sniffles from his place on the floor at Tavros's other side, wedged tight up against one counter with his gangly legs pulled up to his chest. He and Rufioh both—the latter of whom has finally, _finally_ passed out across one of the counters—have refused to leave until he wakes up, and they've stayed true to their word. Since the attack, they've slept (sparsely) here, had their meals here, and spent their days here, and to be honest it had surprised you. Gamzee's commitment, at least. He'd only known your little apprentice a week at most, really, and yet here he was, staying up day and night for the kid. As for Rufioh, you don't think he's showered in days, because even though Horuss brought him a change of clothes there's still a smudge of black peeking up from under the collar of his shirt. 

"So what's the motherfuckin' verdict, Doc?" 

You sigh quietly, heavily, a kind of defeated noise that you don't really intend to make but that comes out anyway. "He's doing alright, I guess—I mean, his vitals seem okay. No external damage or bleeding, and not a whole lot wrong inside his body, either. But he's not responding to any kind of stimuli below his T6, and that's not good."

Watery eyes lined below with dark circles blink up at you. "That doesn't mean nothin' to me here, brother," Gamzee hums, rocking back and forth a little bit as his eyebrows furrow.

You rub the bridge of your nose under your glasses, stalling in your own way because you don't want to say it (saying it makes it real and you _really really really_ hope you're wrong). "His legs aren't working right. They're not really working at all, from what I can tell. His whole lower half from the waist down just... isn't."

"Mother _fuck_ ," Gamzee hisses, and you nod. Because yeah. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

You quietly hum in agreement, and there's another pause, then. Silence as the two of you just watch Tavros, watch his skinny little chest move up and down, listening carefully to his shallow breathing. "The best we can do for him now is let him rest, I think. That's kind of the _only_ thing we can do."

Gamzee nods again, and presses his forehead to his knees, curling into some kind of upright fetal position and effectively ending whatever little conversation the two of you had been having. You don't want to leave (you want to stay here with your friend because _oh God_ if he's paralyzed, if he's paralyzed in _this world_ —you don't know what will happen to him) but you have other patients to check in on and Terezi is expecting you in your office soon. You can't stay, no matter how much it sucks. So you reach down to ruffle Tav's hair with your left hand and adjust the blankets around him before you make your way back out into the hall, closing the door as quietly as you can behind you.

You're on the second floor of the building, where most of the rooms are usually empty and quiet. Now, though, there's a dull murmur of conversation coming from behind several closed doors, a constant background noise that's both comforting and unsettling all at once. You've come to find a certain degree of peace in the relatively-perpetual silence of your building, but you know that if people are making sound more often than not they're _alive_. And that's a good thing.

Suddenly, there's a shout from down the hall, followed by the aggravated shrieks of a not-so-muffled argument. You sigh, not really wanting to break up another fight between the Amporas but knowing you have to, all the same. A quick glance at the clock on your phone tells you that there's still a little bit of time before you need to be downstairs, and you hope you can get things cleared up quickly.

You open the door without even bothering to knock, because at this point they both know the rules and don't get the luxury.

"—reckless, _as usual_!" Cronus is standing over his brother, who's propped up on pillows in his temporary bed and looking for all the world like he wants to punch someone (a particular someone) in the face. Which you think he might, actually, based on the way he's moving to stand.

"Eridan, stay down—you'll pull out your stitches," you say as soon as you step into the room, and he stares you down for a full second before flopping back with a half-wince-half-glower.

Cronus beams, shooting both of you an aggrivating look of smug satisfaction, "Yeah, cool it, kid. See? Even chief here agrees with me. Like I said, you w-were already stupid enough to get yourself hurt—"

You cut him off, because you're _not_ taking sides. That's not what this is. "And _no arguing_ , geez. Or no yelling, at least—I don't care if you bicker like little babies, but if I hear you outside of this door one more fucking time, you're _both_ out."

Eridan sinks further into his pillows and glares at his brother, then. "You heard him, Cro—get outta here. Your douchebag face is causin' too much fuckin' trouble," he grumbles, and just when Cronus looks like he's about to shout something back you raise your eyebrows and he throws his hands up instead.

"Fine, w-whatever. I hope they forget to feed you, you little shit," he says, and then he's pushing past you out the door. Both you and Eridan wait in silence until his stomping footsteps retreat down the stairs to the first floor, and the minute they're out of _your_ earshot Eridan huffs. You don't doubt that he can still hear his brother causing a scene, though.

"W-was that all you came here for, or w-were you gonna poke at me, too?" he says after a moment, and you shake your head.

"Just had to get my daily dose of Ampora-ass-kicking in, that's all. I already changed your bandages for the day, so you're not really my problem." Eridan cracks a grin, then, and you let out your own tired chuckle.

"Yeah, w-well, good. I've seen too many too many ugly mugs today to w-want anythin' to do with anyone."

You can't help but snort at that. "He means well, you know. Cronus, that is." And you get another long-suffering, over-dramatic sigh in return.

"Yeah, yeah—don't need a lecture on how-w t'deal with family. Me and Vantas should start a fuckin' club or somethin'. _Assholes W-With Shitty Asshole Brothers United_ or I dunno."

"Only if you let Jane join," you reply, "minus that first _Asshole_ ," and you do your best to smile. Eridan just rolls his eyes.

"Self-depreciatin' humor doesn't suit you, but that's just my opinion'. Keep scathin' us all with your sick burns or w-whatever, you'll look less like a loser that w-way." Sage advice delivered, he carefully turns on his side, trying to face away from you without pulling too much on the sutures trailing up his calf, and waves a hand in your general direction. "Now-w go aw-way."

"Maybe I'll kick you out even if you _are_ quiet," you say, and all you get in reply is a muffled _yeah, yeah_.

No matter how annoying the Ampora brothers can be, the truth of the matter is that their relationship is actually fairly... stable. They argue and insult each other more than any two people you've ever met, but you know they really do care about each other in their own ways. Cronus wouldn't have been so angry if he didn't.

And in that way, they're so, so different from the clusterfuck that has become Kankri and Karkat. You've seen the Amporas fight, you've seen them come to blows—but at the end of the day they're family, and you don't think anything could really change that. Not their physical differences, not their gap in skill. But the other two—they're a different story. A long story that no one but you and a few others really know from start to finish.

You toss another _don't rip your stitches, I swear to God_ over your shoulder and close the door behind you.

On your way to the stairwell, you pass back by Tavros's room and resist the urge to peek in one last time. You know nothing has changed, though, so you don't, no matter how much you want to.

(And you do your best to ignore Dave's room altogether, because _he_ hasn't moved _either_ , and now it's been so long that you're starting to believe that he never will. You're starting to lose the hope you had that you'd save him, because you're starting to realize that hope is a luxury you can't afford. Not anymore.)

The first floor is noisier than the second. You normally to keep your more severe patients, the ones who stay longer than a day or two or the ones you are seriously injured, upstairs, away from the building's main doors, away from the chaos of people moving in and out on a daily basis. Even with the overflow of the past few days, you've tried to keep at least _that_ rule somewhat enforced.

(Sometimes you bend the rule, though, like with Dirk. He'd been the more likely of the two Striders to survive, as much as you hate to admit it, and you wanted to be nearby at all times just in case something happened so you didn't move him from the room Tav had picked.)

Not all of the doors are closed, either, which is nice in its own way. You can hear the undertones of conversation floating out from almost every direction, keeping you distracted as you move down toward your own room. A quiet wave or a called greeting comes from almost every room you pass, each one accompanied with a word of thanks for one thing or another. (You're just doing your job, you tell them, but they still look up at you like you're something special.)

A burst of laughter erupts down the hall to the right, and you step into Dirk's doorway just in time to see Jake disappear under a wad of blankets as it hits him in the face. Jane is clutching at her sides while she giggles louder than you've heard in weeks, and within seconds Roxy is sitting triumphantly on the squirming pile of fabric as your cousin spews out muffled cries for help. The three of them are all crammed onto the foot of the bed, limbs tangled up as Dirk himself watches on quietly. He looks exhausted, just like the rest of you, and even though you've been doing your best to keep him fed he looks thin in the hand-me-down clothes you've given him. His too-long, two-toned hair gives him a kind of shaggy appearance somewhere between one of those granola-types from the 1960's and a big city homeless man, and not for the first time you think that you should probably talk to him about cutting it soon.

Dirk is the first one to see you standing awkwardly in the door, watching, and when he gives you a little half-nod you blink—because even though he isn't smiling (you don't think you've seen him smile at all in the past two days) his paper-pale cheeks have the slightest flush and his orange-gold eyes are sparkling ever-so-slightly. Shining. And you think, maybe, that he's happy.

So you wave and remind them not to shout (Roxy whines and Jane waves you off with a huff and Jake uses the momentary distraction to wiggle his head out from his tattered plush prison) and you move on to the next room. You'll check on Dirk later, you decide. Because you think this is probably better for him than any kind of care you could give.

When you finally do make it to your office, Terezi is sitting backwards in one of your chairs, face completely pressed up against the window. It's sunny outside. Clear. If you just looked at the sky, you'd never guess that a storm had nearly ripped you all apart just two days ago. The muddy, torn-up ground tells a different story, though—it's like the whole building is sitting on a half-dried swamp. And you think it'll probably be a while before you can get grass to grow anywhere near here again. The earth here is poison, now. It's stained with black blood seeped deep into the soil.

You wonder idly how the surrounding forests will recover, but you know that nature always bounces back. No matter what you throw at it, it'll all still be here long after you're all gone.

* * *

Checking Terezi's progress doesn't take nearly as much time as you had anticipated, so she ends up sitting in your office long after you've finished taking down notes in her file, providing snarky commentary as you go about your business. Out of all the Cured you've treated, you think she's probably adjusting the best to the physical changes—and on top of that, her sensory responses are higher than any you've ever seen. She had already physically recovered enough to fight in the attack despite the fact that she'd been severely injured barely a week before, and now, less than half that time later, she's managed to completely rebound from any minor wounds she'd sustained. And that isn't even taking into account the kind of synesthesia-esque visual sense she's developed in spite of her blindness—and the fact that it's been steadily getting stronger.

In short, she's an anomaly. A fascinating anomaly.

"Why're you staring at me, John? That's weird. And you're doing it all wrong, anyway."

You blink, and sure enough Terezi is grinning at you from across the room, right in the line of your vision when you'd spaced out. She's perched in a chair by the window again, but this time she's sitting on the balls of her feet like she's going to leap off at any second. (And you tense a little because you honestly wouldn't put it past her to do exactly that, most likely onto you, just to see your reaction.)

"I'm not staring at you—you're just. I don't know. In the way of my eyes or something," you huff back, pointedly turning your entire body back toward the papers spread out in front of you. You've got Vriska's file open, now, and you think you've read the same three lines of Rose's most recent psychological evaluation at least half a dozen times. A second passes before your brain processes the rest of her statement and you turn back to Terezi, who's still grinning. _Still_. So you squint at her. "And what am I doing wrong, exactly?"

Her smile widens, and you don't know to make of that because you didn't think that was even possible. "Ogling a blind girl, stupid. Do you like my face, John? Is that what this is? If you're going to take advantage of my disability, at least pay attention while you're doing it."

The strangled choking sound you kind of half-sputter out is very mature and completely fitting for a respectable young man of your age.

Terezi just keeps staring past you, though, totally unfazed. "That was the most pathetic mating call I have ever heard. I am so disappointed in you. This is never going to work out."

"Um," you kind of wheeze, not really sure what to say because she's _still grinning_ _what the heck_ and you can't really tell if she's joking or not. "Not that you aren't. Very attractive. I just. Um."

God damn it, now she's snickering. "You're blushing—Jesus, you're blushing."

"You're _blind_!"

"That is a hurtful accusation. I am hurt."

You roll your eyes at that one, and turn back (again) to your papers because god _fucking_ damn it you're going to get some work done if it kills you (and you are _not_ blushing that is a _lie_ ). "It works out well that you're in the Infirmary, then. Best place to get injured." You silently thank the universe that your voice doesn't crack.

"Oh man, I'm in so much pain from all of these burns. How could you do that to a blind girl, John?"

"I'm pretty sure I don't have any ice, but there might be some sunscreen around here if you want to, like, protect yourself from any further damage," you wave your hand in the general direction of some overhead cabinets.

"I'm suing, this is medical malpractice."

"Bring it," you say without moving, and she laughs—a loud, screeching cackle that you think would be really fucking creepy if you weren't already getting used to it. (It kind of cuts off, though, because you think she startles herself with her own volume. You don't acknowledge it.)

"See you in court, asshole."

"No, you won't."

She gives a kind of scandalized gasp and throws her head back. "Will the slander never cease?"

"Not as long as you're here distracting me." You lean your chair back on two legs and glance up at the cracked, plaster ceiling for a second before rubbing your eyes again. (You don't want to think about who's lying motionless in the rooms above you. Either of them.) Terezi hums, and then out of the corner of your eye you see her leap off her perch into a standing position on the floor. Impressive.

"Then for my own self preservation I'll leave you here to be pathetic by yourself and go piss off Sollux instead," she whines dramatically. You snort at her response and roll your eyes—

_WHAM!_

—and then suddenly you're lying with your back on the floor with the wind completely knocked out of you, starin up at Terezi's laughing face. "Don't lean your chair back like that, loser. It's dangerous and who knows what could happen." You decide it's cosmic payback for doing the same thing to Cronus so many days ago.

"Thanks for the tip," you wheeze, and then she's gone, cackling her way out the door and back into the hallway. You feel kind of bad for shooing her off in a kind of roundabout way, but you know she doesn't really mind. You've found that nothing really bothers her, not really, because no matter what she'll always have the last word. (Although you'll never forget her face when she'd come to check on Vriska and Vriska had _screamed_.)

You wait until she's long out of earshot to get up, because when you'd hit the floor your right wrist had taken the brunt of the force. It takes more effort than it should to roll over awkwardly and fold yourself up onto your feet, and when you do finally manage to get upright you stretch your back, wincing when it cracks.

"You sound like an old geezer."

Jane is standing in the doorway to your office with her arms crossed, and she's giving you that _look_ —the one that could really mean a whole host of things but always boils down to something like _God damn it, John_. You cough a little awkwardly. "Rude."

She shrugs, rolling her eyes at you. That seems to be a trend today. "Not my fault if it's true, you know."

All you can do is huff in response as you reach down to right your chair, pointedly ignoring her because you are a grown-ass man, damn it, and you will _not_ rise to the bait of a seventeen year old girl. "Was there something you needed?"

"We heard a tremendous crash from down the hall and I was concerned, that's all. I should have known it was just you mucking up again."

"I do not _muck_ ," you huff, and now it's your turn to cross your arms. She doesn't even blink though, and all you get in reply is a raised eyebrow. The two of you stare at each other for a second, and then suddenly she narrows her eyes at you.

"Have you had anything to eat today?"

You sigh again and make a kind of vague hand gesture in the air that you know isn't fooling anyone even though it makes you feel the tiniest bit better. "I'll grab something later."

Before you've even finished talking, though, Jane is already shaking her head. "No, you won't. You and I both know that, so don't lie to me. It's bad enough that you do it so much to yourself." Her voice has an edge and you know she's not teasing you anymore.

"I'm not—"

"I'll come by with something in a bit. I've got to bring food for everyone else here, anyway, and one more bowl won't kill me."

You know she means well—you really do—but even so you can't help the frustrated noise you make. You don't miss meals on purpose, not really. You just... forget. You can't remember the last time you _actually_ felt hungry (liar, you can, but that was a different place and a different time), and more often than not the thought of food gives you a vaguely queasy feeling you can't really pin down.

You don't tell her that, though.

Instead, you let her scold you just a little bit more before she turns back out into the hallway.

When the front door of the building open-shuts you close your eyes, lean against your desk, and listen to the murmur of people in the rooms around you.

Your head hurts, you realize. Your wrist is low-key throbbing from where you'd hit the floor and that hasn't gone away, but you can feel a new, dull ache forming behind your eyes. You're half tempted to move back upstairs, back to the quiet of Dave's room, but you know you'll be even less inclined to sift through files when you're surrounded by more people to fuss over. (You're a lot like your sister in that way, you think—or your sister is a lot like you. It's kind of funny. Your Dad was that way, too.)

(But the difference between you and your Dad is that he never made excuses, and no matter how much he had his hands full with you and Jane and even Jade, too, for a while, he always got his work done.)

You sigh again ( _again_ ) and open your eyes.

* * *

**== > BE THE DEAD KID**

_You're surrounded on all sides by gray and black and yellow and your hands hurt—your hands hurt so much they're numb. But if they're numb do they really hurt? Or do you just think they hurt because why else would they be numb? You can't tell (you don't know) everything is blurry and burning and no, no, NO—_

_—you grip the hilt of your sword (when did you pick up a sword?) and you swing and swing and swing but it just passes through—_

_—but you have to keep going you have to keep fighting you have to keep pushing because you have to protect, you have to protect, you have to protect—_

_(who are you protecting?)_

_(you don't know, you don't know, you don't know)_

_Something hits your chest and you scream but no sound comes out because suddenly—suddenly—you can't breathe why can't you breathe what's happening why—_

The world gets bright—so bright, so fucking bright and hot like you've just been thrown dead center into the goddamn sun—and suddenly you're falling. The whole world and everything drops out from under you and the next thing you know you're hitting something _hard_ —something hard and flat and cold and—

_something has your legs and it's pulling and pulling but you can't move your arms because it's got your arms, too_

—you try to lash out at it but you can't. And you can't open your eyes, either, because you think the minute you do you'll be completely and totally blinded like—

_(you can see a flash of something red and grinning through the darkness, but it's gone before you can catch it.)_

—like something? Something you know. But you don't know. Do you?

And for a moment, you go completely still, because your brain keeps jumping around and _what is that something_ and—

What the _fuck_?

There's a kind of foggy realization somewhere very far away that tells you when you stopped moving, nothing happened. The pressure on your arms and legs is still there—and you still can't move them, not really—but there's no new pain. No new grip. No new heat.

And then you start to _hear everything_.

It starts like a low-key kind of humming—like your head's been shoved under twelve down comforters and everything is just kind of. Muffled. Really muffled. But as you keep your body still and focus on the sounds, the mumbled buzzing noises start to take some kind of vague, weird sense and in the back of your mind you think that this whole thing feels a lot like a really, really, _really_ bad hangover multiplied by, like, eight.

_Why eight I hate the number eight why do I hate the number_

Suddenly you feel like you're going to throw up and before you even have the chance to think your stomach just kind of _heaves_ and your heart rate picks up and _suddenly you're fighting again but you're choking, choking, choking—_

Before you realize what's happening, the world tilts at an unnatural angle and your head starts spinning and everything gets _so much brighter_ —

and then you're staring at the blurred outline of.

of a room.

You're in a room. Alone. And you're standing? Oh, shit, you're standing— _THUD_ —fuck nope never mind you're on the floor again and your eyes are closed because _fuck it's so bright_.

You just kind of lie there for a moment, confused and in pain and out of breath, and then you realize that there's still something holding your legs— _oh god oh god oh god—_ but when you open your eyes again (too fast this time and your head starts spinning) you squint and see that you're tangled in what looks like blankets. From a bed?

_Why does your face feel wet?_

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you have no idea what the hell is going on.

* * *

**== > BE THE HELPLESS MENTOR. AGAIN.**

You end up sitting at your desk for a full twenty minutes just sort of staring at the papers in front of you before the pain in your arm becomes so sharp and stinging and unbearable that you can't actually ignore it anymore, no matter how hard you try. You've given up on Vriska's file, and now the lists of supplies you need from Jake and his team when they finally leave are starting to blur a little. You can't tell if that's because you're just unfocused or if your body is finally succumbing to some kind of shock with the stress of the last few days piled into a broken bone or two.

You know you have to be more careful with it, because if it heals wrong and you lose the use of your right hand you'll be screwed. Very screwed. (And you can't imagine how things would change if you lost the use of both your legs, how you would survive, what you would do, so you try not to think about it and you try not to think about the boy upstairs.)

Eventually, you work up the energy and the balls to touch the loose bandage you've wrapped around the swollen skin, and you slowly start to peel it off, exposing purple and black bruises that stretch all the way from the base of your thumb to an inch or two up your arm. It looks gruesome, and you're honestly a little bit impressed with yourself. You've been preaching about the dangers of injury in a world like this for _years_ , and yet here you are.

Fucking amazing.

After a few moments spent kicking your own ass for being so _stupid_ , you steel yourself and start pressing around the injury, trying to pinpoint exactly where the break is. It's hard to tell because _everything_ kind of hurts, but you figure out it's some kind of distal radius fracture, still non-displaced, and you're relieved because those are the easiest to fix. If you'd broken one of the smaller bones, you'd be in more trouble than you already are. (You try to ignore the fact that your self-diagnosis could just be wishful thinking, because you don't have any way to really be sure.)

You end up wrapping up most of your arm and hand in so many layers of thick bandage that you can't really move it, which is good, because you're not willing to break out the plaster rolls and give yourself an honest-to-God cast just yet. If it comes down to it, though, you will—or at least that's what you tell yourself.

The building's double doors open just as you're pinning the last bit of fabric down with a little aluminum hook, and you realize belatedly that your office is still open. Anyone could have passed by and seen how poorly you're really doing, and that makes you panic a little. Before you have the chance to dwell too much, though, Jane appears in your doorway with a massive serving tray of bowls, followed closely by a similarly-burdened Feferi, and you blink.

"What time is it?" you ask, and when you glance at the window you realize the sun has somehow managed to start setting while you weren't paying attention.

Jane raises her eyebrows and you can practically _feel_ how entirely unamused she is from across the room. "Dinner time," she replies, and _yeah_ you _know_ that, but wow you don't think that totally sunk in when she told you she was going to bring you food earlier. Where did the day even go?

As you stand, Feferi smiles at you over Jane's shoulder, "Hi!" and you wave back before she disappears to deliver food to the others on the hall. 

You sister stares you down as you make your way toward her, and you can't tell if she's angry or worried or both. You're not really sure why she'd be mad at you though. Frustrated, maybe? That one seems like a constant, these days. "When Roxy and I come back to collect this stuff later, that bowl had better be empty," she says, and you nod because what else can you do? Nothing, that's what. There's a pause, and as you grab your share, she asks, "How's Tavros doing?" and her tone seems softer.

"About the same," you reply, and you decide not to elaborate. She seems to understand, though. She doesn't press.

"Alright, well, I'd better go. I don't know if Fef is going to remember not to go in Vriska's room, and—"

"Hey, John?" the girl in question suddenly appears behind Jane again, her tray half empty. "I heard a crash upstairs and I'm not really sure if it's important because I don't know how often that kind of thing happens around here but I figured I'd let you know just in case!" She looks worried, but after a tense moment spent wondering what it could be you sigh.

"Eridan is probably trying to stand up again because he's stupid," you say, and even though Feferi snorts she still doesn't look particularly happy. She and Eridan have been through a lot together over the years, and you know that her tent has probably been unnervingly quiet lately while he's been here with you. You can relate a little bit; even though you're in a building full of people, without Tavros up and around to keep you company the Infirmary hasn't felt much like home. "Thanks for letting me know, I'll head up and check on him."

She relaxes a little and nods, before heading back down the hall. Jane gives you a look that says _that had better not be an excuse to skip dinner_ and you roll your eyes at her before moving to set your food on your desk. When you turn around, she's gone, and you're not sure whether to strangle Eridan or thank him because you're half-convinced your sister would have made you eat right in front of her if given the opportunity.

Jane emerges from Vriska's room just as you pass, but before she closes the door you realize that Vriska has moved her bed and lamp since you saw her this morning. It's not on the far end of the room against the wall anymore—instead, by process of elimination you can tell she's pushed it to the same side as the entrance so that when the door opens, whoever is coming in can't see her. You make a mental note to speak with Rose about that later.

Dirk's room is still open, too, and when you walk by you can see Jake sitting on the floor at his side, leaning against the bed as he plows through dinner. Roxy is cross-legged at Dirk's feet, munching happily on her own food while she tries to coax him into eating a few bites. You poke your head in and tell him to get down what he can because he needs the nutrition to get his strength back, but not to push it if his body isn't ready for much yet.

The halls upstairs are still comparatively quiet, and you've already got half of a lecture planned out in your head for the man who's continually proven himself to be the most ornery patient you've had to deal with over the years.

But when you're halfway down to Eridan's room you stop because—

_—what the fuck was that?_ It almost sounded like—

And then you hear it again.

The groan is muffled and scratchy and it kind of trails off at the end, but it's _definitely_ coming from behind you, and maybe you're imagining it but you think (you hope! And also don't because what if it's not a good sound, not a coherent sound) it's coming from Dave's room. You turn around after a moment standing frozen in disbelief, because if you're wrong there's no harm done and if you're _right_ then _holy shit_.

When you open the door, you're tense and poised to throw a punch if you need to. You don't know what's waiting on the other side, if Dave is awake and alive but not human, and if that's the case you have to be completely and totally prepared to do whatever you need to do.

But you don't see pale claws diving right for your throat—instead, there's a crumbled-up pile of thin limbs and tangled sheets laying motionless on the floor. There's black, too, on the mattress trailing down to the pile, pooling from somewhere, and it takes you a moment to realize that the mop of orange and white poking out from underneath what looks like an arm is Dave's head.

"Oh my God," you say without thinking, and you get a kind of startled-tired-confused-pained grunt in return.

* * *

Dave doesn't move as you make your way slowly towards him. As you look closer, though, you can see his scarred back heaving, like he's low-key hyperventilating, and you call his name just to make sure he can hear really you. There's no response, so when you finally get close enough you kneel down next to him you reach out your left hand to—

_Suddenly there's something gripping your wrist_ hard _and you jerk back, ready to slam him into the wall if you need to even though you don't want to but if he's Turned there's nothing else you can do but try to protect yourself and everyone else if you need to and—_

He doesn't make any move to pull you down, though, and after half a second he lifts his head enough that you can finally see his face. The dark blood is coming from his mouth, and now that you can hear his breathing you realize he's rasping, crackling, half-drowning. His body has finally healed enough to start rejecting what it can (but it doesn't look like much, and after almost two weeks you wonder how much is actually flowing through his system). His eyes are closed, and you stay perfectly still, holding your breath because this is _not_ going _at all_ like you had expected. Not that you'd expected much in the first place.

Then, slowly, he opens them, squinting and blinking at you like someone is shining a flashlight directly into his eyes or he's just woken up after a heavy night's sleep or both. Definitely both. But you can see the exact moment several seconds later that is brain, probably muddled and not completely functional just yet, registers _person_ and his grip on your arm starts to loosen. (And yeah, that's definitely going bruise. Now you'll match on both sides!)

Dave makes a noise that almost sounds as though he's trying to speak, but after so long without use or much water his throat is dry, only half-functional, caked with black bile, and it comes out more like another moan than anything else.

"I'm a friend, don't worry. You're safe. If hurts to see, close your eyes. The lights are off but the blinds are open so I'm going to put them down. The sun should be setting soon, though, so you'll feel better about that in a few minutes. I'm going to stand up now, okay?" You say softly, almost whispering, and although he doesn't try to say anything else he takes your advice and his eyelids drop back down.

Slowly, you make your way across the room, and pull down the shades as quietly as you can, bringing the room into a dimness not dark enough that you can't see but significantly less bright than it had been. The door is still open and the main floor switch is still off, so the only light left is the evening sun pouring through windows at either end of the hall.

"I'm coming back over to you, now. You're in the middle of the floor and I'm going to need you to sit up if you can, okay? You sound like you're having trouble breathing, and that will help your lungs get more air." He shifts a little but doesn't move much overall, so when you're kneeling next to him again you say, "I'm going to move you, just try to relax. I promise I'm not going to hurt you, but if something feels wrong try to let me know so I can stop. You were seriously hurt, Dave, and that kind of thing doesn't heal overnight."

You reach out a second time but stop when there's a raspy string of grunts that almost sound like words, now, and you really wish Tavros were here because you need water, you need towels to clean up this mess, you need an extra set of hands (but then you feel terrible because Tavros is more to you than an assistant, he's your friend).

"Don't try to push yourself to speak if—"

"You know my name," he wheezes out a second time, still barely audible and broken but recognizable nonetheless. And once again he tries to open his eyes, squinting up at you and then finally blinking, _looking_ at you and wow, okay, even though you'd seen his red irises before while he was unconscious, coming face-to-face with them when they're working is a whole new ballgame. It's both terrifying and completely mesmerizing.

He's still struggling to get air into his lungs, though, so you try to focus on the task at hand. "Yes, Dave, I do. Now please—you'll feel a lot better when you're sitting up, trust me." And apparently he does, because he lets you carefully maneuver him upward so that he's leaning against the bed. After a few moments, his gasping slows to something more like breathing.

He's still tangled in his sheets, most of which are now stained with splotches of dark toxic bodily fuild, so the next thing you do is set to work unwinding them from his legs. He's not wearing anything aside from a pair of boxers from the Cabinet so you could easily access the injuries all across his body while he was unconscious, and you can see already that he's managed to pull out more than a few of those stitches. "You really did a number on yourself," you say, and when you glance up you see that he's watching you with a slightly-detached intensity that makes his piercing eyes all the more unnatural-looking. "I'm going to have to re-sew a lot of this soon, or you'll open up some of these wounds again."

"Di—"

At first you don't realize he's actually said anything because the word cuts out halfway through when his shallow voice cracks, so you blink at him, and then suddenly it's like there's been adrenaline pumped into his veins because he's _moving_ , glaring at you and grabbing at your shirt with an iron grip.

"Where is Dirk?" he demands, almost shaking you a little, and you put your hands up in front of you ever-so-slightly just in case he does get violent.

"Your brother is fine. He's downstairs, just a few rooms away."

And at that Dave just kind of sags, resting against the bed and visibly wincing when it comes in contact with the injuries on his back. He nods, looking more relieved than any person you've ever seen in your entire life, and his eyes slip closed again. "Good."

After a moment, you pick back up with freeing him from his self-made fabric prison, and he doesn't say anything else. When you've got all of it undone, you start using some of the already-ruined sheets to clean up the mess still smudged on his face, parts of his torso, and the floor. It's already started to dry and stick, though, so after doing what you can you stand up and say, "I'm going to get soap or something for the rest of this, okay? Try not to move much. I know the floor probably isn't very comfortable but you managed to puke all over your bed so I'll have to get that sorted before we try to get you back up there. I might just end up moving you to another room, actually. Anyway, yeah. I'll be right back."

You get a noncommittal grunt in return, and with his eyes still closed you think it looks like Dave might be slipping back out of consciousness. At the very least you want to try and get some water into his system before then, because you don't know when he'll wake up again, so you pick up the pace a little and head down the hall to the surgical room rather then your office downstairs. There, you gather up a small basin and a mug that says "Skaian University Chess Club", and fill them both with water from the sink. On your way out, you grab a few relatively-clean rags, too, and it takes a bit of maneuvering to balance everything without two fully-functional hands.

You're so focused on not dropping what you came for, though, that you almost miss Feferi squeal "Oh my God!" when she sees Dave through his open door. You'd forgotten she and Jane were still handing out food, you'd forgotten to tell them not to come upstairs—or maybe you should have just closed the it when you left. You don't know.

The minute you step out into the hall, there's an ear-splitting snarl, and all you see is a white blur _lunge_ at her before she screams.

* * *

Stew and broken glass fly everywhere as Feferi and her tray crash to the floor, and all you can do is pray the _CRACK!_ you hear isn't her skull against the ground as you rush forward.

Dave is on top of her, snarling, pinning her down and _ready to kill_. The uneven black stitches criss-crossed over his pale skin make him look like something from a horror movie, an experiment gone wrong, and some part of your brain things you should be terrified.

But you aren't, because everything you'd been holding is suddenly on the floor and you're running, diving, hitting his side at full speed, tearing him off her as she keeps screaming. The two of you go rolling and sliding across the linoleum floor until you hit the wall at the end of the hallway _hard_ and come to a stop. Dave doesn't stop fighting, thrashing and growling and yelling as much as he can with a voice so raspy. " _No! What are you doing? I have to—No! Not again—No! No!"_ over and over again until all that's left are incoherent shouts and snarls.

(His red eyes are wild, unseeing, and you're not sure if he's fighting you or if it's something else you can't see.)

Vaguely, you hear the sound of doors opening, of shouting, of someone crying, but Dave gets a hand free and starts clawing at your face so you ignore it and keep him down because right now he is a _threat_. And that is your first priority. So you push back _hard_ and not once does he get the upper hand.

After too long, you manage to flip him on his stomach, arms pinned behind his back and use your right arm to hold the side of his head hard against the ground. He's still struggling, hissing hot, forceful breaths out from between clenched teeth, but with his jaw locked by the pressure you're applying he can't do much more than make grating, caged-animal growls.

"Dave, I need you to _calm down_. No one here is going to hurt you, but if you make it necessary I _will use force_. Like now, for instance. Calm down, Dave. Deep breaths. You're fine, you're safe. I just need you to _calm the fuck down_ ," you say in a low voice, over and over again like a mantra. _You're safe, you're fine, just calm down._

And after what feels like an eternity, he does. Slowly but surely his thrashing dies down, and soon the only things left are the sound of his loud, fast breathing and the heave of his back against the knee you have there to keep him down.

You realize, then, that's _all_ you can hear. Dave, your own heartbeat pounding in your ears, and the occasional sniffle from somewhere to your right. The rest of the world is almost completely silent. And when you look up, you're met with the terrified faces of almost everyone on the hall, all holding their breaths and staring at you wide-eyed.

Feferi is still on the ground, but now she's sitting up, surrounded by a pool of broken glass and food and dark red blood. Eridan, who's propping her upright with one arm and gripping her hand with the other, has his own sharp teeth barred, and you think if he wasn't holding onto her he'd be ripping Dave to shreds.

The stairwell door is open, too, and Jake is standing at the top, arms spread wide in a defensive position while Jane, Roxy, and a few others peer around him, afraid.

And Dirk is there too, although you're not really sure how (and you're seriously going to lecture him later). He's got a white-knuckled grip on the stairwell railing and his whole body is shaking, but he's staring at his brother with an expression of so much horror, so much hurt, that you have to look away.

So you focus your attention back on the maybe-not-as-okay-as-you-thought man you've still got trapped. "Can you hear me, Dave? Are you calm?" You repeat it twice before you feel him sort of sigh, and he closes his eyes. At first you're worried he's passed out again, but then he gives you a stiff, jolting nod against the ground, and you let up some of the pressure on his head without making any move to get off him. "Good." Then, you turn your attention to Feferi, and the taut-rubberband tension in the room seems to snap. From what you can tell, everyone lets out a collective breath as you ask, "Are you alright?"

Eridan answers before she gets the chance to say anything, spitting and justifiably _enraged_. "W-what the fuck kinda question is that? A course she's not alright, she just got almost killed by—"

Feferi cuts him off by just kind of pressing her free hand on his face, over his mouth. "I'll live!" she says, giving a of breathless, strained, hysterical giggle that doesn't do a thing to make you feel better. Eridan growls against her hand.

You hum, low in your throat and worried. The fact that she's okay enough to laugh doesn't mean much, not really. But you can't tell if her attitude is just _Feferi_ or if she's starting to go into shock. "You're bleeding. Eridan, put pressure on the wounds you can, wherever they are, but if there's glass don't push it deeper. Rufioh, carry her to 216, it's an empty room. Actually, no—Eridan, you shouldn't be moving, you're still hurt. Gamzee, try to stop the bleeding."

Gamzee just looks at you, and Eridan starts to protest, but you are _not_ in the mood and everyone else in the small crowd you've accidentally gathered has started to back away, scared and not wanting to be too close (but still not willing to hide in their rooms just yet). "Motherfuckin' _me_?"

"Yes, _motherfucking you_. Show him where she's bleeding, Eridan." You turn to the stairwell, then, and nod to your cousin. "Jake, come here. Roxy and Jane, take Dirk back downstairs, he shouldn't be—"

And suddenly, Dave starts thrashing again. You're caught off-guard just enough that he's able push his torso up and move his head before you slam it back down to the ground. A few people scream in surprise, but Jake doesn't miss a beat and steps forward, ready to help if you need it.

But Dave isn't paying attention to any of you. It takes you a few seconds to realize he's not growling, he's not fighting, and when you really look down at him you see that his eyes are locked dead on his brother.

And you think if he weren't so dehydrated, he might be crying.

But Dirk just blinks, and his expression hasn't changed. And when he speaks, so quiet and heartbroken and scared, you might have thought you'd imagined it if Roxy hadn't reacted.

"What the _fuck_ , Bro?"

And then he turns around, nearly falling as he tries to take the next step down on the stairs. Jane reaches out immediately to help him, and Roxy looks like she's about to start crying when she follows behind.

* * *

After that, Dave goes almost completely limp, like all the fight just drains out of him, and then he really _does_ pass out. You're able to get him up as much as you can, but because of your arm you have to let Jake help you carry him back into his room. His stained mattress is still stripped, which saves you the trouble of doing it now, and you take everything—your own blankets and the papers and books you'd been keeping there while you slept on his floor—out except for the bed.

Most patient rooms in the Infirmary have a worst-case-scenario system set up in the walls and floors. It's not much, really, just four metal hooks Equius and Horuss drilled in after an incident early on that almost cost you your life. Nylon tow straps are meant to be tied to each, and then to the wrists and ankles of whoever you're trying to hold. They're designed to secure any newly-Infected who are particularly violent, keeping them in place so they don't hurt themselves or those around them.

The straps are down in your office, so you lock the unconscious Dave in his room and leave Jake to guard the door just in case he wakes up again. If you're being really honest with yourself, you don't think anything will happen, but whether you like it or not Dave has made it clear to you and everyone else that he's a _danger_. And you're not about to take any chances.

The hallway, although still a mess, is devoid of people now, and you can hear Eridan half-yelling from an open door several rooms down. You know you have to look over Feferi as quickly as possible, so you get your feet moving and make your way to the first floor.

It takes you longer than you'd like to find the straps tangled in one of your cabinets, but as soon as you do you're heading back toward the stairwell, trying to straighten out the mess as you go. You don't realize Dirk's door is open until you pass by and hear Roxy's high-pitched, upset, kind-of-shocked, " _John!_ "

When you look up, you see Dirk on his bed with the girls flanking his sides. He's staring at you, mouth set in a thin line and eyes hard and complexion looking even paler than normal, and you have the decency to pause, just for a moment. Or, well, he's not staring at you, really—he's staring at what you've got in your hands. They all are.

And you can't sugar-coat it, no matter how much you might want to tell them it'll be okay, because even though you're Jane's older brother and Roxy's friend (no, that's not quite right, she's just as much your sister as Jane) the reality is that you have to put your job over what you might want. So you just say, "It's what's best for everyone right now," and keep moving. (Later, Roxy will tell you that she hates leader-mode, and Jane will shake her head quietly, looking worried like always.)

Dave is still unconscious when you get back into his room, and you make quick work of tying him down before you lock the door again and thank Jake for his help. He nods, makes a strained joke about his duty and protecting the camp and whatnot, and disappears down the stairwell to find Rose wherever she might be on campus. The hallway is still a mess, and you'll need help cleaning it up.

Then, you make your way to Feferi.

Rufioh is nowhere in sight when you enter the room, so you assume he's gone back to Tavros, but Gamzee is standing awkwardly in one corner while Eridan seethes at his (girlfriend's? Best friend's? You really have no idea what their relationship is, now that you think about it) side. She's stripped down to her underwear and her food-and-blood-soaked clothes are sitting in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed.

When she first sees you in the doorway, she perks up a little, but the way she's blinking unfocused and only really looking in your vague general direction makes you think she's probably suffered a head injury in addition to whatever else. You tell Gamzee he can go, and he slips out of the room with a quiet "I hope this sister here gets to feelin' better real soon," that goes without a response.

As it turns out, Feferi does have a severe concussion, and there's a deep five-stripe scratch from the back of her right shoulder to the top of her breast that needs stitches. Most of the blood, though, looks to have come from the minor cuts littered all over her body made by the broken glass. She's coherent but confused, and despite her vomiting all over Eridan while you ask some basic memory questions the whole thing goes rather well. Eridan refuses to leave, so you bring him a change of clothes from his room and make sure he hasn't burst any of his stitches before you move on.

Rose, Jake, and Kankri are already working on the mess in the hall, and just as you're apologizing for making your own contributions Cronus and Meenah burst through the stairwell door. Meenah, usually cool and calm under pressure, doesn't acknowledge anyone as she makes a bee-line for her sister's room, and Cronus pauses long enough to ask you how Feferi is doing before he follows her.

You offer to help clean, but Rose shoots a pointed look at the unraveling bandages on your wrist and tells you not to worry about it. (You do anyway, though. Worry, that is.) You don't say anything, and you decide not to dwell too much on the fact that your cousin is up here and not downstairs with his friend.

By now, the sun has completely set, and you wonder if you're ever going to have an uneventful day. With the chaos starting to settle, it occurs to you that Karkat is going to be pissed at you for letting something like this happen, and you can't bring yourself to feel much of anything about that realization. Because you're pissed at you, too—at how irresponsible you were, at how much you let your guard down, at how you've done nothing but put _people at risk_ over something as _stupid_ as _friendship_. And you deserve it. 

While he's still unconscious, you use the last of your suture thread to redo all the stitches Dave managed to destroy on himself, and by the time you're done, you don't really feel _anything_ about _anything at all_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? An update? I know, I'm just as shocked as you guys. It's been a crazy year, and I really can't thank you all enough for your continued support even when all the signs of a dead story were here. Your tumblr messages, fic comments, and fanart have been an inspiration even beyond the scope of Freight, and I have a hefty section of wall in my room dedicated entirely to things you've sent me over the past two years. 
> 
> Speaking of fanart, check out these new pieces! Venidel on tumblr drew six pieces in [**THIS AMAZING PHOTOSET**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/95573181112/venidel-fan-art-of-some-scenes-in-egbertiians), e13g on tumblr drew [**THIS LOVELY JADE INTERPRETATION**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/95573274812/e13g-pretty-sure-this-is-the-furthest-this-is), and nariririri on tumblr dre [**THIS FABULOUS CHARACTER COLLAGE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/124886305987/nariririri-bunch-of-doodles-of-egbertiians-fic). Thank you so much, I love you all so much. 
> 
> In addition, several months ago I posted [**Freight [Disk 1]**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/98668755537/freightstuck-soundtrack-disk-1-and-the-world) on 8tracks. It's the first part of the official Freightstuck soundtrack, with character themes, chapter songs, and the main story track. 
> 
> Last but not least, feel free to message me on my tumblr blog [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/) if you have any comments or questions! I also check the [**freightstuck**](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag on tumblr, but remember that things don't show up in the tag unless #freightstuck is one of the first five tags on your post! 
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has supported me so far. I'm really looking forward to getting back in the swing of things, although I'm not going to throw any concrete dates out just yet. What I can promise, though, is that this story isn't over, and I'm not dropping it any time soon!


	13. Beyond This Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for poor grammatical structure, typos, and overall choppiness. This chapter was kind of weird to write, and I've been awake for over thirty hours now.

**[6/4/37]**

**== > DAVE: WAKE UP**

The last time you rejoined the world of the living, it had been a slow process. You didn't know where you were, who you were, or what was happening. You had no idea about anything. But this— _this_ is something else entirely. It's sharp, excruciating, immediate. It's a thousand needles stinging every inch of your body, pumping adrenaline into every cell, catching you so far off guard you start gasping for air like wind's been sucked right out of your lungs. Your tongue feels like cotton, and your throat burns.

In short, it sucks ass.

Even with your eyes closed, you can see a sea of neon orange that's actually kind of painful, so you try to put a hand over your face and block out the light filtering through your lids. For some reason, though, you can't move.

So, naturally, the first thing you do is freak the _fuck_ out.

(Except not, because you don't  _freak out_ . No way, not you. You just kind of panic a little. And by a little you mean  _a lot._ ) You try to move your arm again, and then your other one, and then both. They don't budge so you yank harder, harder,  _harder_ until you start to hear a strange, inanimate creaking sound. And you realize, then, there's something pressing on your wrists.

Your heart rate starts to pick up, because that means you're not paralyzed—you're being  _held down_ , or at least that's what it feels like. You're  _trapped_ , and  _oh fuck no,_ that is  _not_ okay _._ You open your eyes—

_Who gave the sun permission to be so fucking bright not you that's who shit ugh no fuck this._

—and squeeze them shut again. Temporarily blinded, you stop thrashing, and while you're distracted from the low-key hysteria building up in your head you start to remember. You know your name, you know (vaguely) where you are, but now the weirdly-blurred knowledge of everything  _else_ is starting to sharpen and oh,  _oh_ . Okay. Yeah.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you feel like a TOTAL ASSHOLE. A justified asshole (anyone would react the way you did, right?), but an asshole nonetheless. 

You can recall a man—a tall man with wide shoulders and glasses and a kind smile and a no-nonsense voice that made you feel like things were going to be okay even if you weren't totally convinced. He'd found you, talked to you, calmed you down, and tried to help you. He'd made it seem like it was the most important thing in the world to do so. You'd felt safe, even though you had no real idea what was going on, and when he'd said your name— _Dave_ —it was like you'd been pulled back into your body from some weird, faraway place.

(It was a trippy as shit experience, and not in the cool way at  _all_ .)

But then all of a sudden you'd felt so worried, so panicked, so  _scared_ , because  _you had no idea where your brother was_ ... and like a switch, the opposite of all of those feelings when he'd told you Dirk was alright. You'd been so confused, but you knew then that you were safe. You'd somehow made it to the place where John and Roxy and Karkat everyone else had been waiting. So you'd let yourself relax, and then (of course) everything had gone as horribly wrong as it possibly could.

You'd heard the girl squeal, excited about something (you?), but when you'd turned to look at her all you'd seen was  _gray, gray, gray_ . You had no idea you could move that fast, let alone while you felt like  _absolute shit_ ... and that's where everything sort of starts to blur in your head.

There was screaming, high pitched and  _so close too close make it stop!_ to your ear, and the metallic, salty taste of blood. It's sick smell swallowed you up and made you feel  _alive_ and  _terrified_ all at once. And fighting, too. You'd struggled and struggled against something, not really paying attention to  _what_ because you just  _knew_ you had to protect yourself and  _Dirk and Terezi and Vriska and Gamzee and—!_

And suddenly there was a voice. A firm, strong voice that you'd heard before, telling you (again!) things would be okay and that you needed to calm down. You realized there was someone on top of you, holding you down, and  _oh my fucking God_ you'd been fighting  _a person_ , and you'd  _attacked someone_ , and  _that was really bad holy shit you fucked up, you fucked up_ .

The man had given orders, then, naming people and telling them what to do, and it occurred to you from some very far away place that this was someone in charge. He mentioned Gamzee and you heard him respond, and that had been some odd kind of relief because even though the two of you had never been close friends you'd spent  _years_ together. You were glad he was okay. Was everyone else okay?

_But then he'd said Dirk's name_ —he'd said it _like your brother was in the room_ —and you'd had to see,  _you'd had to see he was okay_ because even though the man had told you already  _you had to see with your own eyes_ . So you'd fought again like a caged animal, you'd searched for him, and when you found him you thought you might be going crazy because he looked so different, so unrecognizable in some strange way that you couldn't really pinpoint. Then  _the man was forcing you down again_ , but it was him, it was Dirk, you just knew. He'd been this all-consuming, amazing part of your life since the day he was born, and you could pick him out in a crowd even if he changed every feature he could.

The way he was looking at you, though. You hadn't seen him wear that kind of expression in years (not since the Beginning) and you think you may have physically felt something break inside your body. And then he was talking to you, sounding so  _hurt_ and  _disgusted_ and  _confused_ , asking a question to which you had no real answer.

_What the fuck_ was right.

You hadn't known then, and you  _still_ don't know.

Once again, you try to open your eyes, this time at the kind of pace that would make elderly snails look like a fleet award-winning NASCAR racers, and after a small eternity you're squinting up at some nondescript field of blank orange-white. Nice, really helpful. You hear a dull murmur of noise all around you, but it sounds far away, muffled, and it's hard to pick anything specific out from the din.

You're determined to figure this shit out, though, so you blink a little and try to move your arms again. They're still not budging, so at least now you know you weren't going  _totally nuts_ a few minutes ago. Next challenge: figure out  _why_ .

Slowly, you tilt your head to the side, but the pin-pricks all over your body flare up every time you try to move and it takes you a second to get a good view of your left hand. And you're not sure whether you should be  _royally pissed off_ or just sort of resigned. You jerk your arm one more time for good measure.

Yeah, you're not going anywhere.

There are four neon-yellow woven straps looped around your left wrist and ankle, probably on your other side too, holding you in place spread-eagle on a bed. They're heavy-duty, the kind of thing used to haul shit on a trailer or something, so you figure whoever tied you down meant Serious Business when they trapped you. (Kinky.)

You recognize the room vaguely as the same one from... some point ago. (It occurs to you that you have no idea what day it is, what time it is, or how long has passed both since you last woke up and since you were in the woods, screaming.) A few things are different, though. The pile of blankets and books that had been in the corner is gone, and you're laying on a bare mattress with no sheets and no pillows.

You're still pretty much naked, too, and you're not really sure how you feel about that. The impressive amount of angry, bloody cuts, purple-black bruises, and wire stitches all over your body keep your attention away from wondering where your clothes are, though. Briefly, you lament the loss of your  _totally hot bod_ , but take comfort in the fact that you'll have some pretty bad-ass scars to show off when you're all healed up _._

And then you realize you've finally pirouetted off the royal handle of sanity, because  _why_ are you thinking about your appearance at a time like this.

There's no one else in the room. It's just you, and you wonder where the noise is coming from because it almost (almost but not quite) sounds like voices.

You try to concentrate on pulling the straps again, this time putting as much force as you can behind one hand. The strap starts to creak (annoyingly loud!), but you're either too weak or it's too strong because that shit isn't going anywhere. Panic starts to build up in your chest, but you force it down because you know— _you know—_ you deserve this.

Suddenly, there's a defined series of  _tap, tap, taps_ that overtake the dull background murmur you're beginning to think is all in your head, and a voice you almost think you know says something far away.

"—on't think you should follow me, but it's up to you. I'm just here to do what I need to and then leave. You're healed enough to take care of yourself, and he's not going anywhere." It's low, terse, and also kind of tired-sounding. A man, probably.

A second person speaks up, and this one  _is_ familiar. An all-consuming, overwhelming sense of relief washes over you because  _oh God, thank God._ Terezi's okay, she's okay.

"I know, I just want to see him. It's not like I have anything better to do, anyway. I'm not going to sit downstairs all day and wait for Vriska to actually open her doo—" she breaks off and the  _tap, tap, taps_ that you realize are probably footsteps (why can you hear footsteps?) stop too and, "John, he's up."

"What?"

"He's awake, moron."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can hear him breathing weird."

"Hm." It's an unhappy sound.

By the time TZ's statement really registers in your brain and you make the connection that this— _this is John holy shit that's what John sounds like why does it sound so familiar—_ the door has already opened, and two people step into the room.

Immediately, you recognize the first one. Blue eyes and messy black hair and biceps to kill a man—you tense up, wary and a little confused. Half of you remembers how gentle he was when you first saw him, how he helped you when you weren't yourself and reassured you; and the other half is focused on a montage-memory of rough hands wrestling you to the ground, a loud voice barking at people you can't see, and the feeling of being trapped, trapped, trapped. (You deserved it but it was still kind of frightening—how _easily_ he could take you down and make you _totally powerless_.)

There are four long scratches down his left cheek that you can't recall. They look fresh, and they're such a prominent feature that seeing them just confuses you more.

You're so focused on the first you almost don't notice the second figure. When you do, though, all five of your senses go into overdrive, because— _danger! Danger! Danger!_ —and you start struggling again even though realistically you know you shouldn't be afraid.

"Terezi, leave," the man says, and now you know why his voice sounded so familiar because it's _him_ , John is _him_ , and that's not at all what you were expecting. (Because _this man_ has a cold stare and a voice that's somehow hollow and angry at the same time; _this man_ is the one who brought you do the ground and held you there.)

But _Terezi_! You'd heard her, you knew she was coming, yet the person standing in front of you looks unfamiliar (while somehow so much the same, just like your brother had seemed, and that worries you).

She looks at you—or you think she does, at least; it's really fucking hard to tell what her eyes are doing behind the red-rimmed Ray-Ban sunglasses she's wearing—and crosses her arms. "No way. This loser doesn't have an excuse for being afraid of me, so he's just going to have to deal with it," she says, and yeah, that's definitely her. You go pathetically limp.

John moves forward and asks, "Dave, can you hear me?" But his tone isn't calming, not like it was last time he found you awake. "Are you coherent?"

"Yeah," you reply, or at least you try to. Your voice isn't working right, and trying to clear your throat does absolutely nothing. Or, well, it does do _something_ —it makes you sound like a rusty lawnmower during the 1970s gas crisis. It's a really fucking fabulous sound, if you're totally honest with yourself.

"Here," John takes a few more steps and then he's right next to you, holding something in front of your face. Belatedly, you realize he has a large black bag in one shoulder and a cup filled with... something in the opposite hand. "Actually, one second." Before you can do anything, he sets the bag in the floor and makes his way back to the door, where Terezi is still standing. The glass gets passed off to her, and he starts untying the straps around your ankles. "I'm going to free you up a little so you can sit up and drink this—it's water, by the way—but you're clearly still pretty volatile so I'm not totally letting you go just yet."

"That's fair," you kind of croak out, and you can't decide whether the expression Terezi makes is worried or amused because even though there's a grin involved her eyebrows scrunch up (and you wouldn't put it past her to laugh at you while you're at your worst, even if she _is_ your friend). As soon as the tension in your legs gives way, you rotate your ankles a little.

John walks back around to your left side and starts slowly propping you up against the wall behind your bed, at the same time motioning Terezi closer. He's oddly quiet, you think, but you really don't have much to go on because you've only seen him in person once.

The water feels nice on your cotton-y tongue, and before you realize what you're doing you've got your head tilted forward trying to chug the damn stuff. It's hard to do without hands, and you accidentally yank on the straps trying to get at it. (When was the last time you had anything to drink? You have no idea.) John moves the glass away before your old-man-dying-of-thirst-in-the-desert reaction spills any of what's inside, though. If either he or TZ hears the distressed, helpless whine you make when he does, neither reacts. "Careful. That'll be super cold if you soak yourself, and if you drink too much too fast you'll probably make yourself sick. That would suck for both of us."

You nod, even though _God damn_ you're still _really_ thirsty, and say, "Yeah, truth. I'm done puking up my internal organs, and I ain't about to start again." There's a little swell of pride in your chest at the fact that you can actually understand what's coming out of your mouth now. "Thanks, man. And hey, TZ. Nice shades." You also give yourself a few bonus points for sounding totally calm and collected even though you're really, really not.

Terezi really does grin at you, though—a genuine, toothy smile—and you actually feel a little bit better. "AC hooked me up with these sweet cherry specs because my old ones didn't make it back with us," she says, and she gives you a thumbs up. You return the gesture as best you can with your arms still pinned down.

Meanwhile, John has set the glass down on the floor and is rummaging through the bag he'd brought with him. There's a thick wrapping around his right hand, wrist, and lower arm that you hadn't noticed before because you were too focused on his face, and you can't help but wonder where his injuries are from. Based on your conversations over the past few months, you know that he doesn't leave the camp much—if at all—so they would have had to come from somewhere here. An equipment accident, maybe? A fight? (You try to completely ignore the possibility that they'd come from _you_.)

You're so caught up in your own thoughts that you almost miss it when John starts speaking. (Mental note: pay attention to what the fuck is going on around you.) He has a needle and a rubber strap in the hand that doesn't look like part of an intense mummy costume, and _wow_ you haven't seen those used in any kind of actual medical context in _years_. "I'm going to draw some blood. The circumstances of your condition are kind of... weird, and I want to take a closer look at what's going on."

"Go ahead, dude. It's not like I'm going anywhere, anyway," you wiggle your arm a little to show off the strap still looped around your wrist, and give your best chuckle, hoping all the while it's as totally nonchalant as you'd like it to be.

John nods, sticks the plastic syringe barrel between his teeth, and wraps the tourniquet around your upper arm. He's quick about the whole thing, and you're actually kind of impressed at how tight he ties the rubber using only one hand. While he works, Terezi makes her way over to sit on the bed by your feet on the opposite side, and you almost don't even notice the needle break your skin. John is so surprisingly gentle that the small distraction is enough to take your mind completely off what he's doing.

But the minute he starts pulling out blood your gag reflex goes off, because _holy shit_ it smells strong, too strong, and for a brief second you're standing over the girl from however long ago, clawing and biting. You don't even realize you've moved until John's hand is on your chest, pressing you back into the wall hard enough to bring you down to reality. "Hold still, Dave. The more you move, the longer this is going to take."

You glance over at Terezi and see that she's holding her breath.

* * *

John takes three vials of blood and sticks a Hello Kitty Band-Aid over the tiny puncture prick in the crook of your elbow. He leaves soon after without so much as a goodbye, and you wonder if this is really the same person you've been chatting with since April. Belatedly, it occurs to you that you should have asked him to undo the straps still on your wrists.

Your head starts to hurt.

Terezi stays behind, but even though the two of you can barely shut up on a good day the room stays uncomfortably silent for a solid five minutes. You're the first one to say something.

"So... Did he leave the water here or what?"

Terezi laughs, and suddenly you realize your mistake because why are you asking her? She's blind, there's no way she'd kno—

"Yeah, I think it's still down there. Here—" She swings her legs up over yours and slides off the bed, disappearing from your field of vision for just a moment as she crouches down toward the floor. When she pops back up, she's holding the cup in her hands, grinning.

"Uh." You just kind of blink at her.

"You thirsty, coolkid?" she asks, and you can hear her holding back another cackle.

"Yeah, but I'm not gonna trust with the extremely delicate operation required to satiate my terrible drinking problem, because you'll get me soaking wet. If you free one of my hands I'll do it myself."

Instead of listening, though, Terezi waves her other hand in front of your face and then sticks the glass to your lips. You don't really have any other choice but to drink, so you do, and the water tastes so nice that you almost forget to be completely stunned by the whole thing. When the last of it is gone, she pulls the cup away and you lick your chin for any stray bits you may have missed.

"Pretty cool, huh?" She says, and you notice for the first time since she walked through the door that she doesn't have a cane with her. She's been maneuvering through the room totally on her own.

"Shit, TZ. Yeah. What happened?" You breathe out, stunned. Because this—whatever it is—is pretty damn amazing.

"The end of the world happened, Dave. Didn't you hear?" She laughs again, and you roll your eyes. "But really, I don't have all the details. The Virus did some crazy damage to my system, but fucked me up in all the best ways. It's great! John said he'd never seen anything like it."

"I bet. You're one of a kind, alright," you snort. "So what's it like being able to... See?"

"Nah, it's different. Like, I can  _smell_ and  _feel_ and  _hear_ and  _taste_ everything. It's hard to explain, but you're too stupid to understand anyway."

"Wow, fuck you," you say, and she gasps, throwing her head back and letting out a scandalized noise that makes you picture some suburban housewife hearing her son say  _sex_ for the first time.

"So rude, Strider!"

"I stand by my statement." There's more laughing, and she sticks her tongue out at you for good measure. It's nice, easy, and the tension in the room starts to disappear just a little. "I'm glad you're doing okay, though. You really had me going for a while, you know? I guess the last time I saw you, you were pretty bad."

"I could say the same about you. We were all pretty convinced you were going to die for a while there." Her voice gets quiet, and she flops back down over your feet so she's facing up at the ceiling. "A week is a long time in a coma when there's no way to get food and whatever pumped into your sorry ass." 

"Holy shit, it's been a _week_?"

"Well, no. I've been driving people crazy that long, but I think we've been here... twelve days? I don't know, it seems like more than that. John and AC are pretty convinced, though, and I'm not about to argue with them."

"Everyone made it, right?"

"Yeah," she nods, the back of her head rubbing against your bare legs, and you don't really have the heart to tell her that shit _stings_ against your stitches because some stupid part of you doesn't want her to move. Right now, she's the only familiar thing in this whole place. "Your weird brother is downstairs doing pretty great, actually. He's up and moving around after your little bitch fit the other day."

"The other day?"

"So many questions, it feels like an interrogation. Yeah, three, maybe four days ago. When you go, you go hard, coolkid. Passed out a second time and left us all sure you were going to kick the bucket for real." You hum but don't say anything, so Terezi continues. "Gamzee is fine, too. That ass-clown has been holed up down the hall since day one, getting what he deserves for all the shit he's been putting into his system. He's got these moments of lucidity, though, when he's okay enough to hold half a conversation, but since the skinny kid got hurt he hasn't said much."

"...You're going to have to start at the beginning for that one."

Terezi waves one of her hands in the air and gives a half-hearted shrug against your legs. "Some stuff went down a little while after we got here. John's assistant, Tavros—he probably told you about him—took a hit, and only really woke up yesterday. He's pretty bad off, though, and the big man on top says he's paralyzed from the waist down. The kid was taking care of Makara before it happened."

"Shit," you don't know what else to say. "What about Vriska?"

"Eh, you know her. How are  _you_ doing, though?"

You decide to ignore the fact that TZ had avoided your question and snort out a laugh. The sound is more sarcastic than you intend. "I'm tied to a wall in a place I've never been while some asshole I've never met sticks me with needles—so just about as well as you'd expect."

Terezi's eyebrows scrunch up below her sunglasses and she snorts, too. "You've met John before, asshole. The minute you losers started messaging he was all you ever talked about. It was disgusting."

"Yeah, well, apparently he's not exactly who I thought he was." Suddenly, the corner of the room looks  _very_ interesting, and you hope your voice doesn't sound as disappointed to her as it does to you.

Terezi doesn't say anything in response, though, and you're just starting to wonder if you said something wrong when she finally speaks up. "He's probably just stressed. Something's been weird with him since you went ape-shit and put that girl Feferi out of commission, but I can't really say much either way 'cause I don't know him that well." When you glance back at her, she's messing with the hem of her shirt.

And suddenly you feel like a complete piece of shit, because this whole time that's the one thing that hasn't crossed your mind. You sit up straight and lean as far forward as you can, accidentally jerking Terezi off your legs in the process. "Oh fuck, oh my God, is she okay? The girl—oh my God."

Terezi props herself up on her elbows and looks at you. "Relax, Strider. She's beat up pretty bad, but she'll be fine. I don't know all the details so you'll have to ask John or whoever, but she left here—we're in the Infirmary, by the way, just in case you're too slow to figure that out— this morning with some guy to move back into her tent."

"Thank fuck," you sigh.

"Yeah, she seems like the kind of person who'll forgive you without really even knowing you—which is kind of stupid if you ask me—so I wouldn't worry too much. If I were you I wouldn't make attacking random innocents a habit, though."

"Yeah, no shit."

Her voice gets quiet again, then. "It'll take some getting used to. I mean, I don't know what all you've got going on in your head right now, but I know _you_. You wouldn't have done something like that if you hadn't been in a pretty bad place. But all the noise and the weird feelings—you'll adjust. It seems like everyone around here does."

"What do you—"

Suddenly, a shrill beeping starts up, and you flinch hard enough to make the ties on your wrists creak. (Terezi jumps a little, too, but she's so quick to recover you think you might have imagined it.) She hops off the bed and pulls a phone out of her back pocket, and a few button clicks later, the beeping stops.

"Sorry, coolkid, I've gotta go kick some ass."

You blink, ears still ringing a little. "Okay?"

"Weapons training. I'll probably swing by later, though. Or maybe tomorrow." She shrugs, throws a lazy wave over her shoulder, and then disappears out the door before you can think of anything to say.

In the silence that follows, it occurs to you that you hadn't thought to ask why Dirk looked so different, or what John had meant when he'd given his reason for taking your blood. Your headache feels worse, now, and you're actually kind of dizzy.

* * *

You don't realize you've fallen asleep again until you get yanked back into consciousness by the sound of two people having an argument outside your room. Immediately, you recognize John's voice, but the second is totally unfamiliar.

"—aid no, okay? Oh my gosh, I'm not going through this _again_ today. Either stay out here or keep making your rounds, but you're not allowed in this room and that's _final_." He's not yelling—not really—but you think he's probably getting pretty close.

"That's _so unfair_. Terezi said he was fine, so—"

"A, Terezi is biased. B, She can handle herself a lot better than you could if something _did_ happen. And C, _I said no_."

At that, your door opens and John steps through. There's a frustrated, angry noise from the hallway and you catch a glimpse of blonde and pink before he kicks the door closed with his foot. Balanced in his left hand is a small tray, on top of which you can see a bowl and another cup. The smell of food hits you like a concrete wall, and you don't have the dignity left to be embarrassed when your stomach lets out the most inhuman gurgling noise you've ever heard.

"'Sup," you say.

John huffs. "Now that you're actually staying awake, you need food in your system. I brought some more water, too—oh, good. Looks like you finished what I had earlier. Did Terezi help you with that? Of course she did. Anyway, I've got some nutritious puree-thing here that should be easy for you to digest."

"Ooh, puree, my favorite. I sure do love me some vitamin-rich mush," you chuckle, emphasizing your already-kind-of-heavy southern drawl in hopes of a smile.

Instead, though, all you get is a sarcastic, "Ha, ha. So funny," as he sets the tray on the floor next to the now-empty glass from... this morning? "At least you're well enough to make terrible jokes, that's a good sign. I'm not going to feed you by hand because you're a grown-ass adult and I've got stuff I need to take care of, but there's no one else around to do it so you're going to have to handle it yourself." You raise your eyebrows at him, but he's already working on the one of the straps pinning you down and doesn't see. "No silverware, though. Even if you seem pretty coherent, I'm not going to take _too_ many chances. And you better not break this, because we're already in the middle of an annoying bowl shortage thanks to you."

"You've really got to work on your bedside manner, dude." John ignores you, and that's probably for the best.

When both of your hands are free, you flex your fingers and rotate your wrists, stretching as much as you can without pulling on your stitches. You lose count of how many joints pop in the process.

"Hey—" John holds the tray just out of your reach, staring you down until you don't have any choice but to look directly into his eyes. "I'm trusting you not to do anything dumb. You're going to be locked in here, but that doesn't mean—"

"Best behavior, got it." Your stomach growls again, and as much as you really don't want to upset John (yeah, okay, you'll admit it—you're a little intimidated by him) you're _really fucking hungry_. You hadn't even realized it earlier; you think you'd probably already passed that point in slow starvation when you just didn't feel it anymore.

He nods, "Good," and sets the tray in your lap. "I'll be back in a little while to get your empty bowl or what's left. Don't try to force it down or eat it too fast or whatever. Like I said earlier, it's really easy to make yourself sick." He goes to put his hands in his pockets but you watch him hesitate with his right hand, like he'd forgotten it was hurt, and he sighs instead. Before you know it, he's gone. Round two without a goodbye.

You decide not to dwell too much for now, because you've got other things to worry about. You don't have a clue what the food in front of you is, but you don't really care. Without a spoon, you have to drink it straight out of the bowl like milk left over after all the cereal has been eaten.

And it tastes fucking _heavenly_. Ambrosia-tier, maybe even higher, and you can't bring yourself to care about the X-rated slurping noises you make trying to get that shit down your throat.

You don't realize there's someone outside your room until the door has already closed and whoever-it-is has slipped inside, and it takes everything you have to keep yourself from choking.

"Damn, maybe I should come back later? You look like you're having plenty of fun in here on your own."

Standing at the foot of your bed is a girl who's almost a full foot shorter than you, and who, when wet, would probably weigh half what your brother does. Her blonde hair is cut just above her shoulders, pinned back with two hot-pink clips that are just a shade off from the bright color of her skirt. It takes you a second to recognize her voice as the one John had been arguing with earlier.

"...Wasn't the door locked?"

She grins, and suddenly she's swinging a ring of keys around one of her fingers in a way that's almost too cliché to be real. "I'm probably a totally horrible person for stealing Tav's set, but John can suck it and I don't think Tav would mind much, anyway."

"Wow, you stole some keys just for little ol' me? I'm flattered."

She sticks her tongue out at you. "It's not like I could get Mr. Hard-Ass-Loser-Pants' set without him noticin'."

"Yeah, well, he's got a good reason for sealing me up in here, after what happened to... Feferi?" You hope you get her name right for a variety of reasons, some more selfish than others.

The girl shakes her head, though. "Nah, we've got way more drama than you'd think going on around here, and it's not like that's the first time something like that has happened. I guess you're just unusual 'cause, you know," she makes a vague hand motion in your general direction, but doesn't elaborate, "but Fef's gonna be fine and we know you didn't mean it." You have no idea how to respond, so you just don't. The girl looks like she's about to open her mouth again, but she catches herself and waves a hand over her mouth instead. "You got a little somethin'... there."

What? Oh, _oh_. Yep, you can feel it. You've got food all over your face.

There's nothing around you can use to wipe it up, so you settle for the back of one of your hands and hope you don't look _too_ gross. When you look down to set the bowl you're still holding back on the tray, though, you realize you're _also_ still pretty much naked.

And there's a kid in your room.

If your face wasn't completely flooded with every shade of embarrassment possible before, it definitely is now.

"Look, are you sure you should be in here? I mean, clearly you're not, because John locked the door and it sounds like you had to do some illegal shit to get in here. But, like, I don't even _know_ you, and we're both going to get in trouble so it'd probably be best of you noped the fuck out an—"

"Oh my _God_ , Dave," the girl rolls her eyes. "At least now I know you weren't cat-fishin' us all with your charming personality. I'm Roxy, bee-tee-dubs. Nice to officially meet you!"

You blink a little because wow, yeah, you probably should have put that one together. Of all the people you've met so far (which isn't many, really) Roxy is _exactly_ what you'd expected. It's oddly comforting, even if you are starting to feel a little overwhelmed by everything that's happened.

"...'Sup." You take a sip of water so you don't have to say anything else.

"Not much. How are you feeling?" Still drinking, you flash her a thumbs up. "That's great. You seem like you're doing better. We've all been kind of worried, but I guess that was probably pretty obvious. Dirk won't admit it, but he's been thinking about you non-stop since you guys got here. So many fraternal feelings in that room, let me tell you that right now. I start suffocatin' a little every time I walk in. And even Janey's been talking about when you were going to wake up. I think that has more to do with John than, like, _you_ though. No offense."

You shrug, and there's a weird _blegh_ sensation building up in your stomach so you stop chugging for now. "None taken," you mumble, although you're not really sure what she means. She beams anyway.

"That's actually kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I mean, I really did want to see if you were okay! But I also already knew because I saw Terezi today and she told me that she'd seen you. For what it's worth, I feel bad for havin' alternative motives, but this is a long-term mission of _totally paramount importance_ and I don't have a lot of time."

She pauses again like she's waiting for you to say something, but it takes a second for your brain to actually catch up. "You might have to slow down some, kid. One thing at a time. You're talking about Jane?" That's John's little sister, you remember.

"No, _John_." 

"Okay, so what?" You're already not sure you like where this conversation is going, because over the course of the day your feelings about him have become something of a mixed bag—and not in a good way.

"You've probably figured it out already, but he's not well. Like, he's always kept me and Janey on our toes with his bad habits and poor lifestyle choices, but lately things have gotten _really_ especially terrible. We've tried our best, you know? But there's only so much we can do for someone who doesn't really want to be helped. So when you first started talkin' to us, we came up with this plan that maybe you could—"

The queasiness is getting harder to ignore and you're definitely confused at this point, so you hold up your hands and close your eyes. "Whoa, whoa—I just said _slow down_. Cut me some slack here, I don't know shit about shit, let alone enough to do whatever you're telling me I have to. Start at the beginning."

She makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and sighs. "Okay, okay. I guess the whole thing is inherently a little complicated, or a lot complicated, depending on how you look at it. Or maybe not at all; perspective is part of the issue, probably, and I think Janey and me and Rose everybody else who's really starting worry about him are just too close to this whole thing to do it right. And it also doesn't help much that we don't know what we're trying to do in the first place."

* * *

Over the next twenty minutes (that's just a guess, though; you have no idea how much time actually passes) Roxy tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the man you thought you'd come to consider a close friend over the past few months. Not his hobbies or likes or fears, but the pieces of who he is as a person that you'd thought maybe you'd hear from _him_ someday. The kind of stuff _other_ people don't advertise you because it's just too personal. 

You feel slimy, almost, the more she talks, but at the same time you start to understand just why she's dishing out all the dirt she has on someone you know—you know because _it's so obvious_ —that she admires more than anyone else in the world. Someone she loves.

The John you'd seen today isn't _him_ , not really, she says. It's like a pressure dial that's been slowly moving closer and closer toward the red in his body finally broke, and now he's reached his capacity for whatever's going on inside his head. He's bottled it all up—all of the pain and the worry and the _kindness_ —and she and Jane have only been able to guess at the reason.

You ask her to elaborate.

She tells you it's the little things. How he's stopped waving at people in the halls, talking to them, being a _friend_ to them. How he's gotten angrier, colder somehow, heartbreakingly cynical. In the days since you'd woken up the first time, he's yelled at two people for coming into his office unannounced, put Gamzee in almost total isolation for the remainder of his detox, and gone so far as to lock Tavros's cousin out of the room so he would sleep in a real bed.

He barely eats, and sleeps even less. From what they've been able to tell, he spends every waking moment pouring over notes and Petri dishes and old text books. That stuff has always been a problem, apparently, but Roxy waves her arms around when she explains that it's getting _worse_. So, so much worse. Like he's turned off any sense of self-preservation, physical or social or psychological, and made it his singular goal to keep everyone _else_ alive.

He hasn't talked to Jade in almost a full week, either, and his relationship with Karkat has almost completely disintegrated.

You still aren't sure how you fit into all this, though.

"It's because you're, like, _special_ , Dave. John's got all of us—his family and everyone on the camp—but in a lot of ways we're all just people he has to take care of. People he's known for years who rely on him for their daily lives to function smoothly, you know? But you survived for _six years_ in a major city with just a few people and no backup, no medical help. That kind of thing is totally unfathomable for a lot of us here. You're a survivor—you and Dirk and Vriska and Terezi and even Gamzee. A survivor in the _real_ sense of the word, not what we are. At the end of the day, you don't really need John or what he represents, because you have been and would be just fine on your own."

You let her speech sink in, and wonder how she can make the _hell_ you've been through sound so easy, almost glorifying the nightmare you had to live day after day, week after week, month after month, _year after year_. What's she's saying is true, in a way—like a self-fulfilling prophecy. By telling you she and the others could never understand, she's making it clear that they really don't. You feel a little hollow, like the connections you'd hoped to built with the people here might never actually be what you want them to.

But you understand, too.

She'd opened this whole can of shit with the preface that it was about _John_ , not you, and that makes sense. He's her whole world— _their_ whole world—and they don't know you, not really.

"I've got no strings attached," you say quietly, and she nods. Most of the energy she'd had when she first came in is gone, now, and she's sitting on the foot of your bed with her knees tucked up to her chin.

"We thought maybe you can be his friend without also being his, I don't know, follower? Like, _just_ his friend. Someone he's on equal terms with. That's why I got you two talkin' in the first place."

That sounds familiar, though, like you've heard it before. Or at least heard about someone matching that description. "What about Karkat? He's John's best bro, right? Why not get him to do... this?"

"They _were_ best friends—practically brothers, even right up to the point when I met 'em. But since this place has gotten bigger, since everyone here has actually settled in, they've started livin' parallel lives. Like, each doing their own thing, never really interactin'. They don't have much of a reason to, and it's twice as hard because they're not even _awake_ at the same time. And the same problem still applies, 'cause even though KK's in charge of his own part of the camp, he still answers to John."

"It sounds kind of like you're trying to get me to mess with his head, if I'm gonna be real with you. Like, low-key bro manipulation or whatever. The _plan_ or whatever seems dubiously ethical at its moral base and generally pretty shady overall."

"Makin' pals isn't _shady_ , Dave. And we weren't even gonna tell you about it 'cause we thought you'd just go right on bein' friends on your own. But then _this_ happened and—"

You don't hear whatever she says next because suddenly there's a thumping noise coming up quickly outside the room. "Time's up," you bite out louder than you intend, and turn back to the bowl of now-cold food sitting in your lap. Seconds later, footsteps turn into the sound of someone handling the door lock, and then an angry _I swear I turned that deadbolt when I lef—_

"Roxy!" John shouts the moment he sees her still perched by your feet. His voice is low and harsh and _furious_ , the kind of tone you _do not_ question under _any_ circumstance. "How the hell did you even—I told you—Jesus _Christ_. Get out, now. We'll talk about this later."

But the little girl doesn't move immediately. Instead, she unfolds her legs and slowly drops to the floor, glancing at long enough to see that her startled eyes are starting to mist over. "There's nothing _to_ talk about. I came to see Dave, my _friend_."

John sighs through his nose, and you can see the muscles in his jaw twitch ever-so-slightly under the pressure of his clenched teeth. "He's dangerous. You could have been hurt."

"Well, clearly I'm not so _he's not dangerous_!" She shouts back, throwing her arms up and effectively launching the ring of keys she still has in her hand directly toward your face. You see John's eyes widen, all trace of wild fury gone for a fraction of a second and replaced with totally unchecked concern, but there's nothing he can do before—

You blink, and your hand is inches away from the tip of your nose, fingers curled around the keys. You don't even remember moving, and you just kind of stare at the back of your hand for a moment before slowly bringing it down. "Holy shit."

When you look up, though, John's gaze is hard again. He doesn't say anything else. Instead, he steps to the side, and Roxy lets out another incoherent, defeated growl loud enough to make you flinch as she stomps out through the doorway. When she passes John, she pauses long enough to glare, and then disappears down the hall.

John takes your tray of half-eaten food and the keys without a word, and locks the door behind him. You can practically feel how tense he is through the air.

He leaves the water with you, though, and half an hour later when you're crouched on the linoleum floor puking up what little you'd managed to get in your stomach, you're grateful.

* * *

Terezi keeps her word, and by the end of the week you start expecting two sets of footsteps around the same time every day when John lets her in to see you. She keeps you updated on what's going on outside the tiny walls of your room (quarantine), describing people you've never met and places you're beginning to think you'll never see. No matter how much you try to convince John you're on the mend, he continues to lock the door every time he leaves 

Although you hear her voice in the building sometimes, Roxy doesn't visit again, and you're not sure whether it's because she's not allowed or she just doesn't want to. Whatever the case, you're not really sure if you have any desire to see her, either. You feel like you've been lied to, in a lot of ways. The two of you had built up what you'd thought was a genuine friendship over the past few months, but she'd only been overly-friendly because she'd wanted something from you. The fact that she's only a kid—a kid who honestly might not realize how much what she'd done _hurt_ —isn't as much of a comfort as you think it should be.

Overall, you try not to think about her appeal. She had said it herself: John doesn't want to be helped, and the more you're around him the clearer that becomes. He's like a completely different person, and even if you weren't so opposed to the idea of friendship for the sake of manipulation toward some _greater good_ , you're not even sure you would _want_ to build a relationship with him anymore.

And you have to worry about _yourself_ , too.

After more prodding than you think it should have taken, John had finally given you the full story about what happened that night in Wyoming and the days that followed. You'd known things had been bad— _really_ bad—but it wasn't until he'd stiffly listed off every single injury you'd managed to survive that you started to realize just how close you'd come to actually dying. And just how strange it was that you hadn't... or worse.

At the very least, though, your sorry condition explains one thing. Several, really.

The constant murmur of noises you shouldn't be able to hear through walls and doors and floors; the way light seems to hurt more than it should, and how you've started spending more time awake at night than when the sun is out as a result; the fact that only two weeks after being mauled, most of your smaller cuts and bruises have faded to pale marks; how your body seems to know where to move, how to move, before your brain does. You've become one of the people you'd heard about, the people John had saved who slept during the day and looked like the things you'd been fighting for six fucking years. (The people like Terezi.)

Except you're not—not completely.

You're something different, and John won't tell you what or _why_.

(You think maybe he doesn't know, either.)

Physically, you convince yourself you're doing okay. You're healing, and no matter how much time it's going to take to get used to all the weird internal shit and external you've got going on, you _will_. You're not even really aware you look any different (everyone gets kind of pale when they lose a bunch of blood, right?) until you wake up one evening and realize your hair has grown too long to ignore, and you can see where the ginger ends and the white begins just at the top of your vision. You'd asked John for a mirror, and had been surprised when he'd actually brought one the next time he came to give you fresh clothes. He wouldn't let you keep it, but didn't a word when you'd stared at your reflection for a full ten minutes, either.

When mention it to TZ later, she sits you down and tells you very seriously that you're more beautiful than a Victoria's Secret Angel, and you can't tell whether she's being serious or just fucking around. You don't say anything else after that.

The stuff you're _really_ worried about is in your head. Because even though you've managed to avoid a full-scale, tsunami-grade flip out, you get the feelings it's coming. (You're so far in denial about this whole thing your psyche has gone meta—you _know_ you're in denial, you can even _acknowledge_ that you're in denial, but no one has bothered to tell your brain yet.) Waiting for your complete and total breakdown is like living in a house with broken smoke detectors. You know they're going to start screaming at you sometime, it's just a question of when.

You don't see Dirk again, either. He hasn't come to visit you, even though Terezi tells you he's almost completely healed by now. His injuries (you hadn't actually made the connection that he'd been _hurt_ and he was _like you_ until John had offhandedly mentioned that your symptoms were slightly different; you'd demanded to see him, but John told you that was up to your brother because you weren't going anywhere anytime soon) weren't as horrifically extensive, and the Virus's biological shenanigans had helped speed along what needed fixing.

At first, you try to respect that he might need some space. You'd both been through a lot, and the two of you have never been overly-affectionate about much of anything. But as the days pass without so much as a "I'm glad you're alive" via TZ, you start to get frustrated. And worried. And restless.

Because yeah, okay—maybe _he_ wants some time away from you to process what's going on, but _you_ need to see him. _You_ need to make sure he's doing just as well as everyone says. And _you_ need to know whether he's avoiding you because he's adjusting on his own or because he's afraid of you.

(You'd seen the way he'd looked at you that day in the hall. And you still see it, every time you think of him, every time the nightmares you can remember catch up with your consciousness.)

When you finally decide to break out of the tiny, white-walled, dull-as-hell prison you've started to consider your own personal corner of hell, it's not claustrophobia or resentment at John for keeping you confined or even plain ol' curiosity that seals the deal. It's Dirk.

* * *

**[6/9/37]**

You don't tell anyone (meaning Terezi) about your plan. The whole thing relies ninety percent on luck and ten percent on how well you can actually function outside the relative isolation of your room, and you're half convinced that as much as she loves making people's lives difficult, Terezi would talk you out of it if she knew. She trusts John's judgment just as much as everyone else, and you don't think she would really understand  _why_ you need to see your brother.

(From what she'd told you about her family, she only had one sibling: an older sister she hadn't been close with and hasn't seen since long before the world went to shit. And even then, there's something different about how you think of Dirk; it's more than  _brother_ , somehow, because in a lot of ways you  _raised_ him.)

You're not particularly worried about getting out of the room itself. Back in Houston, it wasn't practical for you and the others to stay in one place for very long. Getting too comfortable meant letting your guard down, and eventually the monsters would figure out where you'd holed up if you weren't careful. The five of you had always been on the move, spending a few nights in one abandoned apartment before breaking into another—or a house or a store or an office building—for the next week, and over the years you'd built up an impressive repertoire of self-taught home invasion skills you think the great MacGyver himself would be proud of. Locked doors have only ever stood in your way as long as you've let them.

The tricky part, though, is figuring out  _when_ to do it. John's visits are sporadic at best, and after a few days and nights spent sitting in front of your door, listening to what you can, you start to understand what Roxy had meant when she'd said he never slept.

(You learn a lot about the other people in the building, too. There's a boy down the hall who constantly has visitors, usually the same three voices in shifts with a few exceptions. You only realize after there's a strange rumbling noise up and down the hall one afternoon that it's John's assistant, the kid who can't walk anymore. Everyone makes a huge racket that day, first in a so-loud-it-almost-hurts frenzy of cheering and then a shouting match after a large  _CRASH!_ sends two of the voices into an argument about wheelchair design flaws.

The girl you'd attacked, Feferi, starts working again near the end of the week, much to the displeasure of a second female voice you don't recognize. Their conversations usually involve a lot of repeated " _Are you sure you're okay?_ "s and " _Oh my gosh, yes! You're worse than Eridan!_ "s. You're really, really glad she's alright.

And although you can't make out specifics about what's going on downstairs, someone leaves what must be a stairwell door open one day and you pick up enough to learn that for all her big talk, Vriska isn't adjusting well to the change in environment. Apparently she's making some progress, though, because on a few days later when Terezi comes to visit she tells you she'd spoken with her for the first time since y'all arrived.

You hear Dirk's voice once that day, talking with Roxy and someone with a thick accent you can't really place, but they're too far away to understand what's being said.)

An opportunity finally comes late Monday night, long after Feferi has made second-meal rounds for the other people who keep backwards time. In the last week or so, building population has steadily declined, and now the nights are almost completely silent. It's peaceful, in a way, and you think maybe you'd enjoy it more if you weren't so fucking  _bored_ .

Although you get the feeling you won't be for much longer.

Several hours ago, John disappeared downstairs, and while there's nothing super sound-the-alarm out of the ordinary about that, when things are this quiet you can usually hear him moving around. Now, however, there's nothing, and you think maybe he's actually gone to  _bed_ for the first time since you started in on this little game. Perfect.

Your escape plan is simple by necessity, because you don't have much to work with. Although your blankets and sheets have been returned, the room is still devoid of any major piece of furniture or appliance other than your bed... and the blinds on your window.

It takes a little bit of maneuvering to get them down from their metal brackets, but you manage it well enough. The window frame's top is just out of your reach so you have to climb up on the sill, and you honestly think the whole thing would have been pretty entertaining to watch if you hadn't been so worried about falling. Someone, most likely John, would come running at the sound of both you and the blinds hitting the floor.

Once you've got your prize, you lay it out on your bed and set to work prying apart the plastic casing at the top. Inside every pair of slat blinds is a metal hook or two that holds the pieces in place when they're up, and that's what you're looking for. It's easy enough to find, and in a matter of minutes you have the whole contraption reassembled (sans a few bits) and snapped back in place. You won't be able to see out of your window much after this, but you like your room dark anyway so it's no great loss.

Carefully, you bend each hook out to some semblance of a ninety degree angle, and set to work on the deadbolt holding you captive. Although Vriska was the best of your group at picking locks, you've had your fair share of practice, and it's not long before you're sliding the door open and breathing in the sweet smell of freedom.

The empty hallway looks familiar, in some faraway sense, and you try not to dwell on the fact that the last time you'd seen it some serious shit had gone down. Because you're on a _mission_ , damn it.

You know Dirk is on the floor below you, so the first thing you do is look for an exit. You had been right—there is a stairwell, and the door is just a few feet at the end of the hall to your left. Bingo.

The moment you step out of your room, though, you almost lose your balance because _holy shit_ , it's like the world around you sharpens to 4-fucking-K. It's not even intentional, your body just _knows_ you're moving into a Bad News situation with one singular goal in mind. You make a mental note to ask TZ about it later, and although you're a little disoriented you don't stand still for long.

The stairwell door makes an awful, high-pitched, inhuman grating sound when you try to open it, because why the _fuck_ would it not, and your heart rate picks up so fast you think you might throw up. After a few seconds spent completely frozen again, though, you don't hear any indication that John is going to materialize out of nowhere to murder you, and soon you're slinking down the steps in total silence. You leave the door open as an easy escape route.

You don't realize just how _dark_ everything is until halfway to the first floor you glance out one of the small windows and see that tonight is a new moon. The only natural light shining is coming from the stars, and no overhead bulbs are ever on in the building at night, from what you've been able to tell. You almost have a mini-crisis right then and there because it's _pitch black_ and _you can see just fine what the fucking hell_. Suddenly, you feel like crawling out of your skin because you don't even know your own body anymore. ( _What the fuck? This is so messed up. So fucking fucked up._ )

It takes a minute to coax your respiratory system back into some semblance of functional (oh _hell_ no, you're not having your breakdown here), but eventually you do and you keep moving.

The door at the end of the stairwell doesn't scream quite as loud at the second floor entrance, but it's still enough to make you jump back into the closest corner as soon as you get it open. Just like before, though, the hall stays relatively quiet. Now that you're actually on the first floor, you can hear some signs of life—a chorus of snores, the faint sound of someone humming, and one murmured, accented voice holding half a conversation—that you hadn't before.

After a moment of listening, though, you realize the conversation you can hear isn't one-sided at all. There's a quiet voice responding every now and then, so soft you almost miss it.

So soft you almost don't realize it's Dirk. 

You have to decide, then, whether or not you want to keep moving or if you should just turn around and go back up like nothing happened. You hadn't planned on finding Dirk awake, much less with someone else—although if you're honest with yourself you hadn't thought much farther ahead than where you are now, at the bottom of the stairs. Ultimately, though, you figure you don't even have to _see_ your brother. Maybe you'll just listen for a while, make sure he's alright, and then turn around.

So you steel yourself and silently make your way into the hallway, creeping so slowly you can barely feel the air moving around you as the voices of your brother and whoever he's with slowly get clearer and clearer, louder and louder. You're impressed at how muted Dirk's side of the conversation is, almost like he's whispering, and only when you're just a few feet away from the room you think he's in can you really make out what he's saying.

"—erious, man. Shit gets real out there, don't discount the high possibility that something could go wrong and inevitability get you and your team killed." Dirk doesn't sound worried, though—his tone is just as deadpan as it's always been. ( _What the fuck, Bro? What the fuck, Bro? What the fuck?_ ) Just as deadpan as it usually is, at least.

"Holy fucking mackerel, you sound just like Jade," the other kid responds, followed by a muffled thump. "I've got plenty of field experience, so I'll be _completely_ useless out there."

Dirk sighs. "Based on what I've been told, though, your _field experience_ doesn't extend much beyond the confines of this relative oasis. And trust me, Jake—out there is _nothing_ like what's here."

Jake? As in the kid your brother spent months talking to over Pesterchum, John's cousin? That makes you nervous, for some reason.

"You act like I've never been involved with the natural ataxia we live in these days. I understand completely that you had it hellishly rough down there in the great state of Texas, but that's no justification for invalidating what we've been through here. You had an entire city at your disposal—we had _nothing_." Jake's voice is serious—low and tense in a way that reminds you of John—and for a moment there's a palpable tension in the air you can feel even though the closed door.

"I'm not trying to—ugh, I'm just encouraging you to be smart about it. Exercise extreme caution and do not die under any circumstance. You leave for Missoula or wherever-the-fuck in eleven days, dude. That's not exactly an eternity to prepare."

"I don't need an eternity, just—"

Suddenly, you hear too loud, too heavy footsteps coming from behind the door marked _DO NOT DISTURB_ across the hall, and belatedly you realize the humming you'd heard earlier has stopped. Dirk and Jake are still talking, but you miss whatever they say next because _shit_ , you're not sure if whoever is behind that door is going to walk out and see you and—

The knob turns. You bolt.

You hit the stairwell doorframe and fling yourself around the corner just as light from the room's now-open doorway floods the hall. You're trapped, now, because if you try to make it to the second floor there's a good chance you'll be seen thanks to either your movements or reflection of the light off how fucking pale you are. So you just stay there, frozen, and hope whoever it is doesn't notice there's a door open that shouldn't be.

There's a quick series of knocks, like someone rapping on wood with their knuckles, and when all that follows is silence you know Dirk and Jake have stopped talking. After a long moment, you hear the tell-tale turn of a latch, and your brother's voice. "Hey, John."

_FUCK._

There's a little shuffle of fabric, then, and when John speaks he sounds exhausted but... not upset. And you almost don't recognize him. "You haven't seen Jake, have you?"

"It's almost four in the morning, he's probably in bed or something. I don't know, ask Jade," Dirk responds, and now you're actually a little confused. Hadn't he just been talking with...?

"Oh, really? Hm," John doesn't sound convinced, almost like he's humoring your brother. "Well, if he does come by here before the sun comes up, remind him that he starts sparring with the rest of his team tomorrow—or today, I guess. No more teaching for him, he'll be down in the dirt with everyone else at seven AM, and I'll be out there watching how he does."

Almost immediately there's a muffled, " _What?_ " followed by a thump, several muffled curses, and the sound of your brother heaving what has to be the most defeated sigh you've ever heard.

"You had one job, dude," he says. "It's not that hard to stand behind a door and keep your mouth closed."

You can't help it—you really can't. The half snort-laugh you choke out before you realize your mistake sounds so fucking loud you think you might've gone deaf afterward.

Because the whole hall goes quiet as your brother stops in the middle of whatever he'd been saying next.

After a moment John says, "Fef knows to keep the stair doors closed."

You hear footsteps.

And you _sprint_.

* * *

You don't get very far. 

There's only so much your newfound, impressive natural instincts can do for you when you're in Full Panic Mode and aren't paying attention to much of anything other than an internal mantra of _Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!_ that doesn't falter for a second when your face makes contact with the stone staircase just a few feet up from the first floor. You're so stunned that you just kind of lay there, sprawled across the steps, questioning every decision you've made since the day you were born (or at least in the last two hours).

Your brain doesn't even register pain or the warm, sweet smell of blood until John half-yells your name in a tone that's somehow concerned and _furious_ at the same time, and starts running toward you. When it does, though, you gag. It's in your—you can _taste it_ —nope, nope, _shit, nope_ —

"Breathe, Dave."

But you can't, you can't, because there's _blood everywhere_ and—

A pair of hands pull you up by your armpits, turning you around and then before you know it you're sitting propped against a wall. John is crouched in front of you, and frowning doesn't even _begin_ to cover the face he's making at you. You blink at him, head still spinning and _fuck you're still choking, it's everywhere, oh God, it's everywhere_ —and the next thing you know there's fabric pressing at your chin, soaking up what's still oozing out of your nose and your mouth. You're flooded with an entirely _new_ smell, muted but still distinct, and familiar somehow.

"Seriously, Dave—breathe. Spit it out if you have to."

When your eyes refocus, John is shirtless.

Shit.

He's not looking at you, though. Instead, he's got his attention on a black-haired man you'd probably say was his brother if you didn't know better, standing in the stairwell doorway. "Jake, get a real towel from my room." He nods, disappearing down the hall, and then it's just you, John, and your brother, who had been next to the man, Jake ( _how did you not pick up on that immediately wow you must have really hit your head_ ). John's still talking, though. And wow, he's _pissed_. "How the fuck did you even get out of your room? I locked the door—I know I did. I had my _reasons_ , you know. Jesus Christ, you're a mess."

You try to shrug and it sets your head swimming, but at this point you've already made yourself look like too much of an idiot and what little dignity you have left won't let it show. So you take the cloth (John's shirt) from his hand and start wiping off what you can. It's almost completely soaked, now, and you hope he wasn't too emotionally attached to it because that shit isn't coming out without a fight.

You're still having trouble getting your lungs to work right, though, so when you try to speak it sounds more like a series of guttural gurgles and chokes than actual words. "Can't be tamed, dude."

John just kind of looks at you and shakes his head like he can't believe he's having this conversation (which he probably can't). "Oh my _God_."

But Dirk? Dirk laughs. Or, at least, he kind of snorts in a way that makes you think he might have laughed.

And suddenly, the clusterfuck you've managed to get yourself into seems worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! There it is!
> 
> Good stuff.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting on the last chapter! The overwhelming support after over a year away was absolutely astounding. I love you all.
> 
> Remember you can always drop me a message over at my tumblr, [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com), or tag something freightstuck in the first five tags! If I miss your post, just let me know and I'll take a look. Also a special shoutout goes to [doublemobiius](http://doublemobiius.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for letting me in on the secrets of the PNW. I live on the east coast and have never even been far enough west to see the Mississippi River, but for some reason I decided to write a story set in Washington State. You're fabulous, Pallas.
> 
> Anyway, thanks again! See y'all in two weeks!


	14. Mud-stains and Blood-stains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out to y'all. Eight weeks is a long time. I had some trouble with it both because of a lack of clear plot direction and some personal stuff I've been going through. It's NaNoWriMo, though, so I've been forcing myself to write lately as a means to get back in the groove. I apologize if this one seems kind of disjointed. I wrote pieces of it at different points in time, partially out of order. As always, I hope things will get easier in the future. 
> 
> More notes to follow at the end of the chapter!

**[6/9/2037]**

**== > JADE: ZONE OUT **

The Skaian University of Arts and Sciences is set just southeast of a mountain chain, right at the foot of a cliff. Down that cliff, a half-decent waterfall pools into a lake that's fed from two sources—the falls and a river running parallel to campus—and on the shore where the lake and river meet, there's a long glass-and-canvas, metal-framed building filled with rows and rows of plants.

Out of all the places left to go these days, this—the mountainside, the lake, the greenhouse—is your favorite.

Auditory and visual catastrophe of the University's hydroelectric power generator aside, the whole scene is actually very beautiful. Against the dismal, cloud-muffled sunrise just now peeking over the tree line, you can almost pretend that this is just another adventure, another destination experience with your grandparents and Jake. A bland one compared to some of the sights you've seen, but unique in its own way.

You can almost pretend that the last six years just... haven't happened.

Almost.

A spray of _freezing_ water hits you from the side, and when you jerk, scream, and drop your fishing pole, you nearly slip off the wet stones into the lake in front of you. _Not_ cool!

Your name is JADE HARLEY, and if you didn't have to wade into the icy lake to get her, you think you might STRANGLE your best friend. Instead, though, you flip a middle finger in her general direction and squat down to fish your pole (puns!) out from between the rocks you're standing on. Nepeta remains totally unfazed and laughs. " _That's_ what you get for not listening to me!"

Even when you're not leading missions, the two of you have a responsibility to the camp, and more often than not that means you get to help provide food. Harvesting crops, hunting, fishing—stuff like that. You don't mind the work. Honestly, you think it's all mostly enjoyable; quiet and cathartic in its own way. At least you do when you're _alone_. When you're with Nepeta, though, things can get a little... out of hand, because although you both get results, your methods are very, _very_ different.

Like this morning, for instance.

While you've been fishing from the lakeside at the far bank where the current is calm, line in-hand ready to lure in trout and cutthroat with your bait, Nepeta is stripped down to her underwear, thigh-deep in the rapids, grabbing at prey with her bare hands and tossing them toward the shore. You've both had relatively equal success today, not that you're keeping score or anything.

(You totally are.)

"I was listening to you, _geez_!"

Nepeta rolls her eyes. " _Nuh-uh_ , I bet you don't even know what I said."

You stand up again and start reeling in your empty line, huffing. "I do! You were talking about Karkat."

"No, oh my gosh, we moved on from that ages ago." She throws up her hands and then puts them on her hips, splashing water everywhere a second time. (This time, though, you're watching, and manage to execute a pretty sweet dodge.) "Now we're discussing the sexual-social behavior of _pan paniscus_ —those Bonobo chimpanzees."

"What?"

"They use sex to keep the peace in their society, right? And there's no real discrimination between, like, gender or other tribes. Lady chimps pair up, dude chimps pair up, ladies and dudes—and there's some kind of communal orgy every couple of hours. They're one of the most docile species of primates out there 'cause their main form of conflict resolution is just, you know, fucking. So I'm thinking the best way to get rid of all this tension we've got in camp is to just—"

"Whoa, whoa—there is _no way_ we were talking about that!" You almost lose your rod again trying to cover your eyes against the horrible mental image of your cousins naked. Gross! "Just... Ugh."

Nepeta bursts into hoops and hollers, she nearly doubling over into the water. You kind of wish she actually would, just so you can have the satisfaction of seeing her face, and you try not the think about how much your indirect retribution would be dampened (hehe, more puns!) by the fact that, to her, the water really isn't so icy.

"We totally were! Or I was, at least. You were just kind of staring over at the trees looking stupid."

"You're fucking with me."

"You really did look stupid."

"No, no; I mean about the... _monkeys_."

"Oh, that? Yeah, I'm totally serious! It's amazing what a stress and energy relief sex is. Karkat and I—"

" _Okay that's it we're done here! We're done!"_ You really do drop everything this time, and you're not sure whether you want to assume the fetal position or drown Nepeta. She's easily fifteen feet away from you and the rocks under your feet would be awful to lay on, though, so you end up just kind of flailing around for a solid four seconds. " _I don't want to know! We're done!"_

Then Nepeta really _does_ fall. It's beautiful.

Before either of you can say anything, though, a shrill beeping picks up from the pile of Nepeta's clothes by the greenhouse door, and the two of you sober up a little. It's not an emergency—it's the wrong kind of sound for something like that. Nepeta heaves a sigh. When you look back over, she's standing again, staring at you with big, sad eyes that make you furious for some reason.

"Time to go," she says, and you grunt, not moving, all carefree joy sucked right out of you and the air up here in your little isolated not-paradise. "Time for _me_ to go, at least. You can do whatever you want; you're you. But you can't hide out here forever."

"Watch me," you huff as she sloshes her way toward the shore.

"I'd rather not, actually. Come _on_ , Jade—you've been sleeping in the greenhouse for, like, a week now. Avoiding John and Jake isn't going to change the fact that Jake _is_ going, and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Fuck you! Don't think I've forgotten that it's just as much _your_ fault as _theirs_ ," you bite out, and you almost feel bad when Nep looks like she's been kicked in the sternum. Almost, but not quite.

She doesn't stop talking, though, even as she strips out of her wet underwear on the riverbank and starts putting on her dry clothes. "At least come to training. You'll get to watch me and Eq kick his ass—that'll at least make you feel a little better, right?" 

You don't say anything.

After a few minutes of gross, awkward silence, Nepeta gets the hint and sighs. The last think you hear before she disappears back into the trees toward camp is a mumbled, "You've got to forgive someone sometime, you know," and then you're left alone with bitter thoughts and a basket of wriggling, dying fish.

* * *

 

You don't know how long you sit there, staring out at the water, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for another meal to bite your line, or for something to drag you down into the lake and hold you at the bottom. That last thought is morbid enough to surprise you, because it contradicts so much what you've been trying to achieve these last six years—the only thing you've ever done, ever wanted to do: survive.

(Somehow, though, you're too tired to really care. You've only been awake for a few hours, since just before sunrise, but you feel like you haven't slept in a decade.)

Eventually, you decide to take a break.

You're not giving up because there _is_ no giving up, not with this. You'll have to do it again sooner or later, because if you don't someone else will come by for the poles and nets and disturb your peace. Maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow morning; it doesn't matter when, just that it will happen. So you gather up your sopping things and toss the equipment back into the greenhouse without any real conviction, before hoisting the fish-filled basket's leather strap over your shoulder. Slowly, you the trek back toward the main camp and, there, the Cafeteria.

You make quite a sight, you think, ragged jeans rolled up just below your knees with a dark blue-and-green plaid flannel button-down shirt tucked halfway into the high waistband, where you've got a hunting knife holstered. Your sleeves are rolled up just over your elbows, and you're covered from neck to toe in splotches of mud. Although you've tried to bathe in the lake, you haven't brushed your knotted-up-in-a-wild-bun hair or even changed your clothes in a week.

Three years ago, you wouldn't have thought twice about it. Now, though, you and everyone else have gotten used to the kind of minimum-standard cleanliness that comes with civilization. It makes you uncomfortable—both the dirt, and how gross you feel covered in it.

The whole thing doesn't make sense to you, how the marks of domestication and sophistication—the things that make you human and separate you from the creatures in the woods around you—are all rooted in unhappiness at their most basic points. Dissatisfaction with the way things are and the desire to improve them. Dissatisfaction in who you are or the things around you or the conditions in which you've found yourselves.

Civilization is the _need_ to progress, to make choices, and then inevitable dissatisfaction with those decisions.

You wish you could be something simpler. An animal following biological imperatives instead of a conscience. Devoid of higher emotion. Devoid of any sense of existential meaning or purpose.

Life would be so much better.

So much easier.

So much more and less, all at once.

You stub your toe against a tree root and curse. The pain doesn't unbalance you enough to fall, but in a way it wakes you up from a kind of mindless stupor you hadn't realized you'd dropped into. (Like when you're driving and your mind is a million miles away but you still somehow get where you need to go, or when you're singing along to a song without paying attention and then suddenly realize you somehow know all the words even though you can't remember learning it.)

The dying fish in your basket squirm a little, jolted back into their last moments of consciousness at the break in rhythm.

In your life now, you're like those fish, you think as you pick up the pace again. This is their purpose—they live so they can die to serve a greater good, your survival and the survival of everyone else who will eat them. You exist now only for a similar cause, the survival of yourself and those around you. Without you, there would be no food, no supplies, no means of defense. Sure, there are others—Nepeta and your teams, even John and Karkat—but you are one of the _best_.

And you can leave camp the most often, for the longest times, taking the greatest risks, because in some ways you have the least to lose.

(Your family is a broken mess, you can't do much else, you don't _have_ to be in some sad fabrication of the old world to stay sane because you never really lived there in the first place.)  

The mud on your back and legs still feels gross, but it's worse now. Like the dirt is seeping under your skin.

You keep walking.

The small section of forest that separates the lake and river from the main campus isn't large, not really, but now it seems like five hundred miles pass between the greenhouse and the edge that opens up where the Markeryard is laid out. You can hear the tell-tale grunts, yells, and laughter floating up through the trees from the training grounds just below the hill to the west, and you do your best to ignore them, even as you pause.

You almost never come here.

The whole place—ragged handmade wooden crosses tied together with fabric, crudely-carved rocks, a single dying sapling a young mother had planted to honor her daughter—is depressing, and you already get enough of that every day. You start walking again.

A light morning breeze whips by, making you shiver against your damp clothes, and with it comes the disgusting, acidic, burning smell of cooked meat. The smell of _death_. (You'd finished dealing with the piles of corpses—getting rid of what you could with fire and burying the bones of what was left—more than a week ago, but the _stink_ decided to stick around. You frown and hope it rains again soon.)

There's only one other person in the field with you, a thin, dark-haired figure hunched over a particular part of the Yard you know better than you'd like. No matter how much you just want to _keep going_ and not think about where he is, you can't, because the cold wind makes Kankri shiver, too, enough to shift his position. And then he sees you. And he gives you this look that makes you want to hit something. "Jade? My God, you look as though you've been chewed up and spat out by the river itself."

His voice is rough and strained, like he hasn't used it in too long, and he sounds like he's been crying. Maybe not when you'd walked by, but recently.

You shrug and push forward. You don't want to deal with this, not today. "Someone has to do the messy work around here."

Kankri nods, frowning like he wants to say something but can't find the right words. It pisses you off sometimes just how fucking _calculated_ he can be. All thought, all talk, no action.

(That's not fair and you know it, though. Kankri's been around since the beginning, even longer than you, and he's done more than his part to keep you all going.)

"I suppose that's true." He stands up, brushing the dirt off the knees of his own old jeans. "Where are you off to this morning? I was under the impression you were in the midst of a self-imposed isolation."

"I haven't been hiding—I've been enjoying the aloneness alone thing. Sometimes you just gotta _separate_ yourself," you snap, and Kankri either doesn't get the hint or he just doesn't care because he starts walking toward you.

"That still doesn't answer my question, you know."

"Maybe that was the point."

He pauses, just a few feet away from you, and sighs. Then there's that _look_ again. Brow furrowed, eyes squinting ever-so-slightly, whole body tense—except for his hands. They're shaking.

You pause, too.

A second passes and you don't know what to do. You know what you _want_ to do—you want to keep walking and not look back—but there's a little piece of you that also wants _it_. A specific kind of _it_ , at least; the kind of _it_ Kankri seems like he can offer. Company. Shared pain. Quiet misery.

You're too late, though, because before you can say anything he nods again. "I should be getting back to the kitchens." And that's it. He just... starts to walk away. You're kind of stunned, really—it's so unlike Kankri to let something go. Maybe something really is wrong, you think. Maybe you should tell Rose? Maybe you should yell after him? You're going the same place anyway.

But you don't even know where to begin, what you'd say, so in the end you don't do anything at all. His back disappears over the hill, and you're left standing by yourself, staring after him.

When you look back at the field, you see there's a small bundle of wildflowers at the foot of your uncle's marker, and it occurs to you that you can't remember the last time you visited your family's memorials.

* * *

It's still relatively early, in that strange time of day just before one half of the camp is awake and just after the other has started to retreat for sleep, so the grassy hill in the middle of campus that separates both sides is relatively empty. You see a few people here and there—early risers and night owls milling around in the quiet, overcast, almost peaceful atmosphere—but no one stops to talk to you. A few wave, one gives you a smile, but most just continue on their way. You're grateful.

You make it all the way to the Cafeteria doors without much more than a pause, and hope the trend continues. The Infirmary is next-door (in a loose sense, because everything on campus is spread out more than you think was probably necessary when the place was built) and you can see both the building's entrance and John's office windows across the long strip of overgrown landscaping and crumbling sidewalk separating you. You're too far away and the sun is too bright to catch anything but the horizon's reflection in the glass, but that doesn't mean John or whoever else is inside can't still spot you out in the open. Your feet move a little faster.

Nothing happens.

You slip through the Cafeteria doors without looking back.

Like the courtyard, there are a handful of people inside minding their own business. Two are still eating, but the rest are seated by themselves with books or notepads or nothing at all. One middle-aged man with gray skin has his head resting on the table in front of him, totally silent and perfectly still. Most, though, are empty with the exception of a few leftover plates, a plastic cup here and there, three forks, and the occasional smear of food. Dinner for the Cured probably didn't end too long ago.

You make your way back toward the kitchen, where you can hear the faint sounds of running water and metal pots jumbling together. You're surprised to see Feferi elbow-deep in a soap-filled sink, totally alone. Hadn't Kankri said...? At the very least, the other members of the General Care team wouldn't have left her by herself so soon after she'd been hurt. (You'd heard about what happened from Nepeta, who'd heard it from Karkat, who'd heard it from Eridan, who was apparently there.)

Feferi has her back to you so there's no way she can see you, but before you say anything she turns around and grins. "Hi, Jade!" You hadn't exactly been quiet.

"Where is everyone?" you ask, slowly sliding the basket onto the floor. Most of the sticky lake water has drained out and the fish are almost totally still, but every now and then one will spasm helplessly in the pile. You almost feel bad for making them die such a long, painful death.

Fef waves a hand in the air, slinging soap bubbles everywhere. "Rose and Jane are covering for John, Cronus is training with Eridan this morning, and I don't know where Kankri and Roxy are. Probably still asleep? Kankri said he was busy—" _What?_ "—but I never heard back from Rox."

"She's missing?"

Feferi shrugs, smiles a little like she's trying to _pacify_ you before anything's even happened (what is _with_ everyone today?), and turns back around toward the dishes. "I'm sure she's fine. If she's not still in bed, she's probably with Sollux or something. It wasn't _technically_ her day to help in the morning, anyway, so it's not a big deal."

You sigh. "Fine. Anyway, here—" you kick the basket. "I figured it'd be better to bring them over now instead of just, I don't know, letting them sit outside all day to go ba—wait, why do they need to fill in for John?" You blink, suddenly wondering what else you've missed. Nepeta would have told you if something happened to him, right?

"He's out at the training grounds, last I heard. I guess he wanted to keep an eye on Jake or something? And thanks—just let me finish this and then I'll clean them." She pauses, and from behind you see her shoulders kind of slump as she swipes the back of her hand across her forehead. "Although hopefully someone else will show up so I can get some sleep. I don't want to have to worry about starting breakfast, too." You don't think she means to make you feel bad—she's not the type of person who would.

Before you can stop yourself, you say, "Don't worry about it—I'll take them out front and do it. No sense letting them sit longer than they need to, and they'll probably stink up the place anyway."

So much for getting in and out quickly.

(And Feferi looks at you over her shoulder with so much gratitude you start to feel even worse about not actually wanting to stay.)

The conversation trails off into nothing after she thanks you at least twice, and you hoist the basket up onto your damp back for the second time today.

The main dining area is empty, now, of everyone but the one unconscious (?) man still slumped forward. You wonder idly if he's okay, but it's not your job to worry about people's lives—not really. Just whether or not they have what they need, right?

You settle on the sidewalk just to the side of the main Cafeteria entrance and drop the basket at your feet before sitting down cross-legged, your back against the building wall. With John gone, you don't have to worry about hiding from the Infirmary, so it doesn't take long for you to fall into a steady rhythm of gutting your catch with the hunting knife at your waist, piling the fishy innards in the grass so you can take them back to the greenhouse for fertilizer later. It's nice—calming, almost—especially now that most of their flailing has stopped.

As you work, the thought occurs to you that if Roxy hadn't replied to Fef's call for extra hands, Rose would've on her behalf. But from what you could tell, she hadn't. It seems a little odd to you, but then again you've hardly been around the past few months—you don't really know how things work here on a daily basis anymore. And Roxy can take her of herself by now. She's, what, fourteen? (You blink, suddenly realizing that you have no idea.) It doesn't matter, though. Feferi didn't seem to think it was a big deal, and besides— _it's not your job_.

(Right?)

* * *

 

You spend the next half hour as engrossed as you can force yourself to be in the fish in front of you, cutting and pulling and piling. Every now and then you catch your mind starting to wander, though, so you have to pause and yank it back before you can do anything else. It's annoying, but slicing off your hand would probably be even worse. _Cut, pull, pile. Cut, pull, pile. Cut, pull, pile._

(Everything around you smells like shit soaked in lake water. You want a shower, _need_ a shower. Not just a skinny dip under the waterfall, but a _real_ deep cleaning. Ugh, you feel disgusting.)

A slow movement finally registers in your peripheral vision, and your hands stop moving. One side of the Infirmary's double doors is folding in at a snail's pace, just a few inches at a time, and if you weren't one-hundred-percent sure wind couldn't turn a door knob you think you might've written the whole thing off as the chilly June breeze rolling through. Your mind immediately goes to John (had training ended already? Had he come back while you were inside the Cafeteria?) but he wouldn't be so weird about his own damn door.

After a few tense moments, it stops halfway open, and there's a hesitation long enough for you to start wondering if it actually _was_ the wind before a small, skinny, _pale as shit_ arm slides through. Then a torso, one jean-covered leg, and part of a he—"What the _fuck_! Shit, shit," whoever it is disappears back inside so fast you don't get a real look at his or her face. The muffled curses continue, though, wafting out over the grass just loud enough for you to make out a few.

At least you know it isn't John.

You decide not to get up, and instead turn most of your attention back to the fish in your hand, vaguely annoyed. Again.

The door doesn't close, though, and eventually whoever-it-is decides to try again. Slowly, the figure emerges a second time, now with one hand held over his eyes. Blond hair just a shade or two off from his skin, drowning in clothes a few sizes too big (that you think might actually belong to Jake, now that you have a better look, but you're not really sure); it's the kid you brought back from Laramie, Dirk.

Or, at least, you think so. The last time you'd seen him, he'd been unconscious on an Infirmary cot and in pretty bad shape (also wasn't his hair darker?). Now, though, he looks... almost okay? If you ignore how much weight he's lost, that is. And how disoriented he seems.

Honestly, you have absolutely _no_ intention of getting involved. Yeah, maybe you _do_ kind of wonder if he's supposed to be outside, and maybe you _are_ kind of curious about what he's doing, but you've got work. Really. It's none of your business, end of story.

But when he tries to take a step and ends up pitching forward, balance lost to the metal door sill running along the ground, your body moves on reflex and you bolt up. You're too far away to do anything.

The _crack!_ of skull against sidewalk never comes, though, because in the blink of an eye Dirk's hands are out in front of him, feet moving, and he's using the momentum from his fall to push himself back up into a standing position a foot or so beyond where he'd been. His eyes are still shut. Impressive.

That's the end of his bag of proverbial tricks, though, because he just kind of stays there frozen after that, arms out like he's waiting to fall again and honestly looking pretty dang lost. "Shit," he mumbles, and you can't help but snort.

"...Are you okay?"

He jerks so hard you think he might go down again, and his head snaps in your direction. For a second, he opens his eyes, but as soon as he does he yells, " _Fuck!_ " and then both fists are covering his face. His balance teeters. God, is this kid even ready to be up?

"Whoa, sorry—didn't mean startle you or anything," you say, moving a few steps closer. He tries to move backwards but stumbles again and yeah, you're pretty sure what he's doing right now is Totally Illegal. But at the same time, you remember how skittish Vriska was the last time you saw her, and stop just in case. "I'm not going to hurt you, if that's what you're freaking out about."

The kid snorts. Wrong assumption, then.

"No, I know. I just... fuck, I didn't think this through." He mutters the last part like he's talking to himself, and you raise your eyebrows at him even though he's still got his hands over his eyes.

"...Does John know you're out here?" Dirk stands up a little straighter. "Mhmm, I thought so. Don't worry—I'm not gonna tell," you say, shrugging. "If whatever you're trying to do is gonna piss him off, I'm not about to stop you." Honestly, you think making him angry might brighten your day a little—and you're not ashamed to admit that yes, you're _definitely_ that petty.

He sags a little with what you think is probably relief, and drops his hands to hang limp at his sides. For a moment, he squints at you, but hisses a little and then shuts his eyes again. "...Thanks."

"No problem. As long as no one gets hurt, I don't really care." (You turn around, then, and start making your way back over to your spot in the shade with no intention of getting involved any further. By the time you sit down, though, Dirk hasn't moved. He just keeps standing there, probably totally fucked, but with a stubborn expression that says he's not really willing to admit it. Halfway through another fish you decide have a little mercy. "...Are you doing something in particular, or just, you know, out for a tan while the warden's away?"

He has the decency to look sort of embarrassed, even if it's temporary. "I'll be gone in a second. I just have to adjust to real, actual sunlight. Shit's way brighter than it seems from a window. But if you could point me toward the... place where they do exercise and training and stuff, that'd be cool."

That catches you off guard, and you blink. "You know John's _there_ , right? Like, you want to go _toward_ the person you're trying to avoid?"

"...Yeah, like I said—I didn't really plan ahead, okay? I thought I'd go watch my bro, though. He's up there today and I figured—Look, just tell me where to go and I'll be out of your hair." He huffs, frowning.

You blink at him. "Hang on a sec, John _let Dave out_?" What the _fuck_ is your cousin thinking? Suddenly, your mood flips from somehow simultaneously annoyed and amused to _angry_. How irresponsible could he possibly be?

Dirk's shaking his head, though, and he looks kind of hurt. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say? "No, no—Bro's not—he's... I meant this guy named Jake. My, uh, friend."

You deflate, relieved but not pacified. "That still doesn't explain why you're okay with the fact that John's up there."

"Look, just tell me where to go, okay? You want me to piss off John, so why the fuck does it matter?" Dirk snaps, opening his eyes just long enough to glare at you.

You shrug again. "Whatever, I guess it really doesn't. You'll never make it if you're voluntarily blind, though."

"Jesus _Christ_."

You can't help it—you laugh. The whole situation is honestly ridiculous, and yeah, okay—you admit that you're a little curious. (Only about Dirk, though. Yeah. You don't give a shit about why John's out at training today, you don't want to see his face when he gets pissed off, and you know Jake is going to be fine so it doesn't matter whether you check up on him or not. Only about Dirk.) "Give me a sec and I'll take you up there."

"What?"

He doesn't get an answer, though, because you're already gathering up the fish—gutted and whole—to bring back inside. You'll deal with the other gross bits later, you decide (and hope you can get back to clean them up before the breakfast crowd complains). Fef doesn't question it when you tell her something's come up, but she sighs anyway.

By the time you make it back outside, Dirk's moved a few feet west. He's also squinting around, which makes him look really stupid. "You're going the wrong way," you say, and you think he glares (but you can't really tell because you start laughing again).

* * *

**== > BE THE HELPLESS LOSER**

Fuck that, you are _not_ a loser. In fact, you're so much the absolute antithesis of anything even remotely related to failure one might call you a fucking _champion_. A conqueror of collapse. A destroyer of deficiency. A vanquisher of—

The aggravatingly-apathetic chick you've been (sort of?) arguing with for the last few minutes emerges from the building across from what you've come to learn is this camp's one and only medical facility, both hands stuffed into her pockets. She'd used her shoulder to open the door and just sort of slides out, looking for all the world like taking you to see Jake and John is the absolute _last_ thing she wants to do. (Which you don't really get, to be honest. From what you've been able to gather, the former seems pretty well-liked by the refugees living here and the latter is respected almost unconditionally. It puts you on edge a little.)

You squint at her (because yo  _fuck_ the sun, but you're not about to stagger around this place with your eyes _totally shut_ ) and she makes some snippy comment that sets her off like she's best damn comedian left on earth (which you think is improbable at _best_ , even in such an atrophied global society) so you decide to scowl at her instead.

Your name is DIRK STRIDER, and you are SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. Three months ago, you and the cluster of assholes your Bro managed to collect over the past six years FLED the only place you've ever called HOME with no real plan—and then a little over a week ago, you woke up in a STRANGE PLACE surrounded by STRANGE PEOPLE, devoid of any recollection as to how you'd actually arrived. A bunch of crazy shit happened after that, most key points of which aren't even worth thinking about because A) they don't make a lot of sense, and B) you're still trying to figure out how to exist as a functioning maybe-not-totally-human (which is petrifying in and of itself and takes up a lot of your time).

Suddenly your feet aren't touching the ground anymore, and you end up accidentally opening your eyes all the way because _what the actual fuck_ and _shit, nope,_ so you thrash a little and— _THUD—_ back to earth. The girl (who you realize isn't a girl but a woman clearly older than you) is standing over you, flipped from giggling at her own joke to pissed as hell, but before she can yell you say, "What the _fuck?_ " and your voice cracks because _puberty_ and your pride hopes she's too angry to laugh at you again.

"Well, there's no way you're going to make it up there on foot before winter rolls in, so I might as well carry you," she bites. "But if you kick me again, I'm just going to drop you somewhere and leave."

"No."

"Do you want to get there or not?" She crosses her arms, towering like some Amazonian warrior with no time or tolerance for you and your petty problems. You're flat on your ass in damp, overgrown grass, half blind and totally lost, and in the face of a stranger so fierce and uncaring you almost forget who you are—Dirk _motherfucking_ Strider, raised by a man without fear.

When you try to stand up, you slip in the dirt.

And without asking, she just reaches down and _hauls you up over her shoulder_ like a sack of laundry.

"Okay! Okay, fine," you (totally don't!) shout, because now your face is _inches away from her ass_. "Carry me, whatever. Just let me piggyback or something." You realize she's snickering.

Before you know what's happening, she reaches back to grab your forearm and leans to the side and you start falling off her shoulder and— _oh_ fuck _no, she is_ not _dropping you again_ —but with her right hand free she grabs your other shoulder and—instinctively you latch on and—

"Better?" She asks, and _what the fuck_ you're on her back now. It occurs to you that your feet aren't that far away from the ground. She's much shorter than you thought, and _six times stronger_.

"Yeah." Your voice cracks again.

* * *

The fact that she's carrying you doesn't slow her down at all, and you start to wonder what kind of life the people here really live. A life of survival, just like you—but one built on a different foundation than what you and Bro and the others had. In the city, stealth was the key to staying alive. No one—not even Bro—had the kind of raw power you've seen in the people here. Jake, John, and now this woman. (You try to ask her name, but she says you'll figure it out eventually. The rest of the walk is mostly silent.)

You don't have any real mental frame of reference for the size of this camp, just technical dimensions from Roxy that made some kind of objective sense. But now, as you squint around the grassy fields and buildings, you realize that it's _huge_. Not in the same way the Houston was, with its endless skyscrapers and street block mazes—here, there are acres of open space surrounded by endless, empty forest. The architecture is few and far-between, most structures well-kept and clearly in use, and only one is taller than two stories. It's quaint, like a rural suburb.

But the tents—they're what would leave you speechless if you had anything to say in the first place.

Row after row cloth and tarp shelters large enough to stand up in, unlike anything you've ever seen before—there's a collection of them behind the building the woman had been in and out of, lined up and somehow astonishing. (A few people are milling around, and one waves from afar, and you don't think it really occurs to you until _right then_ that this place is _full_ of life. It takes your breath away.)

But when you make to the top of the slope that you realize is the geographic center of this whole community, the small group of huts looks haphazardly built, mediocre, _temporary_ compared to the sea of animal furs and canvas that stretches out in front of you.

This area is fenced off, and each tent is easily twice the size of the first you'd seen, clearly well loved and lived-in. They're spread out, some with natural but oddly morbid ornamentation in their lawns (bones, wood, rocks... even small gardens), and every so often two are connected with what looks like a clothesline (but you're too far away to really tell). A huge fire pit surrounded by stones and logs sits in the center of it all, clearly the hub for what almost looks like a small village.

(It's completely deserted, though, which is almost unsettling.)

The picturesque living photograph has you totally enraptured right up until the sound of someone shouting at the top of their lungs breaks the scene.

" _Seriously_?" The woman carrying you falters for just a second. " _Move,_ Jake!" In the distance, you can hear yelling, wheezing, the rhythmic thudding of footfalls. And you think—just maybe—the sound of someone crying.

A few minutes later you see it, and the woman stops again.

The grassy, rectangular area is relatively large—wider than a football field but not quite as long. It looks more like a grazing pasture than any kind of athletic environment, though, with weeds and wildflowers grown halfway up to where you think your knees would be if you were standing. It's surrounded by a two-foot-high, two-rail split wooden fence, clearly built by hand but still sturdy enough to hold the weight of a young woman (with black hair and gray skin and even though you've started to get used to _it_ because you've met so many people like _that_ over the last week, you still feel your muscle _tense up_ and you think maybe that means you're _afraid_ ) balanced on top of the tallest horizontal slat. She's the one screaming.

Standing on the ground next to her with his arms crossed is a _massive_ man with straight, dark hair that falls just past his shoulders and tan skin. Even though she's on the fence, he's tall enough to come up to the gray ( _Cured_ , you think. _Cured_ ) woman's shoulders. (Another beast, you think. You're starting to lose count.)

Off to one side, outside the fenced-in area, a group of thirty-some people are scattered, collapsed in the grass. Even though the weather is cool, they're covered in sweat, chests heaving and mouths gasping for air. Some you recognize (Terezi!), most you don't. While a few stare blankly at the overcast sky, the rest are transfixed by the brutal scene unfolding inside the field.

Jake is on the ground, face-first in the dirt with his arms braced beside him like he's going to push up—but he can't, because John has one foot on his back, holding him down.

And in that moment, you begin to understand why _fear_ and _respect_ as so intertwined, so often confused. 

Because _this man_ is not the gentle, awkward voice who reassured you that everything would be alright when you woke up and had no idea where you were. _This man_ is not the soft touch who dressed and re-dressed your wounds, told you who you were now and why, or sat with you on late nights when you'd slept through the day without meaning to. _This man_ is not the one who joked with you and Jake and Jane and Roxy, poking fun at each and every one of them so you'd forget everything terrifying around you. _This man_ is not John the caretaker, the doctor.

He's the leader, the warrior. The one who'd fought your brother—your _inhuman_ brother—and held him down like it was _nothing_ with no mercy in his eyes. The one who'd said _It's what's best for everyone_ like caging your only family was the most mundane thing in the world (even though you know it had to be done). His face is set in a stoic, silent, immovable frown, and he's got his arms crossed like he's putting no effort into holding his cousin down.

You realize that Jake is the one crying.

The woman on the fence jumps down and makes her way toward him, yelling, yelling, yelling until she's right up in his face. "Get _up_ , Jake! Your team is surrounded! Are you just going to sit there and _let it happen_?" He's struggling, now—and you can see his arms shaking from the weight of his cousin. "Infected are _everywhere_! Meenah just died, Jake—what are you going to tell her sister? She died because of _you_! Because you gave up and decided to lay on the _fucking ground_!"

Jake lets out a roar, then—an angry, frustrated, _exhausted_ sound that makes your own body go a little limp because this is _merciless_ , worse in some ways than what your own brother had put you through (but in others so much the same)—and you can seem him strain as he lifts himself up almost to a kneeling position—and then a second later his face _slams_ into the mud. And through the overwhelming _stench_ of fish and sweat and nature, you smell blood. John's arms aren't crossed anymore. Now, he's got one hand in his pocket and the other—the bandaged one—hanging limply at his side. He's leaning forward, putting more weight on Jake, holding him down with more force than before.

The woman carrying you is squeezing your legs to tight it almost hurts, and her chest is heaving.

Jake goes kind of limp.

And then she screams, "Get _off_ your _ass_ or I will _dump all of your shit_ in the _fucking river_!"

Every single person jerks to look at the two of you, and you're hit with a slew of mixed expressions everywhere from confused and happy to _pissed as hell_. (You think most if not all are directed toward your shitty chauffeur.)

But the distraction catches John off guard ever-so-slightly, and Jake heaves up one last time, throwing him off balance just enough to get him to step down, and in seconds Jake is standing again. He's covered in muck and his nose is bleeding and there are tear-tracks in the dirt on his face, but he's grinning at the woman—and he's grinning at _you_.

Then everyone starts shouting at once.

"What the _fuck_ , Jade? Why would you— Don't you know he's not—"

"You came! I knew it! Can't hide out fore—"

"Cripes, Jade! Think of some new threats, will yo—"

"Oh, shit—we're dead. We're _so_ dead. She's he—"

"Dirk! Long time no see! You reek, tho—"

Amid the chaos woman from the fence lifts one leg and _kicks_ the small of Jake's back just hard enough to make him stumble. "No one said you could stop running!" She's smiling, though, and even though he groans he does what she says. She and John begin making their way over to the two of you the moment he takes off. Terezi starts to get up, too, but the tall guy from earlier starts yelling at the whole group and she stays put.

The woman holding you (Jade! Holy shit, this is _Jade_. You feel like you should have known that, given how much she looks like Jake, but the way she'd acted about her _family_ when you first met her...) lets go, and _thump_ , you're on the ground again. For a second, when you look up, you think you see concern in John's eyes as he marches toward the two of you, but it's gone so fast you're not sure if it was ever really there. Instead, he zeroes in on Jade like he's about to give a _devastating_ verbal beat down and—

He kind of wheezes a little and steps back, thrown off, because Jade punches him _hard_ in the gut with absolutely no remorse.

"Fuck you, John."

* * *

 

His expression whips from hurt to _pissed_ to totally calm in an instant (what is _with_ this family's complete and total lack of emotional control?), and then suddenly he's towering over her, a menacing silhouette against the morning sun that reminds you of how _she_ had dwarfed _you_ just a few minutes before.

The woman from the fence pops up between them before he can say anything, though.

"Okay, guys! We all know you have issues, but, like, deal with them on your own time!" She claps her hands together and bounces on the balls of her feet, glancing back and forth between the two. "If you want to fight, get in the pen and do it. If not, get along or go away! I'm trying to do my _job_ here." Then she turns to you and grins, sharp teeth lined up and just crooked enough to make the expression look more terrifying than reassuring. "Besides! You don't want to look bad in front of the new kid. Jade, you can't just _drop_ people. It's rude." For some reason, you get a weird vibe from her. Like she's talking down at you, the same way Jade has been all morning.

Jade has her back to you so you can't see what she does, but there's no vocal response. Instead, you hear her huff, and after a moment she backs off and starts walking toward the rest of the group, who are now on the ground doing a series of grueling core exercises. She doesn't even glance at you.

Everything calms down a little after that, which is actually kind of nice. Before she leaves you and John alone (which you are _not_ excited about, but it's your own fault and Jade even warned you about having to deal with him), you're formally introduced to Nepeta, and now that you're collecting faces to match the names of people you've heard about you're starting to think you'll never stop being surprised. She seems so... small compared to the picture you'd painted in your head. She pats John on the back before she makes her way over to Jake, who's still running (but with a determination that makes you wonder if what you'd seen earlier had really happened) and tells the leader of this entire community to _please be nice_.

Thankfully, John doesn't yell at you. Instead, he asks if you're alright (you are) and if you're able to stand (you can), then helps you up... And launches into a barrage of serious technical questions you're not really prepared for. (How are your eyes? What's the faintest thing you're smelling right now? The softest sound? How are you feeling emotionally? Do you have any unusual impulses or thoughts? And on and on and on, looking you over as he talks.) He doesn't write a single thing down, and you wonder if you'll have to repeat everything for him later.

Then, of course, he asks _why_ you're out here. You start to explain that Jade had found you, but he cuts you off and repeats the question. _Why_?

You don't really have a good answer.

(You'd wanted to see Jake, yeah, but you knew he'd probably be back to see you in your room after he'd finished for the day. He'd probably nap for a while on the foot of your bed, and then leave when it came time to do his job with the security folks. He'd be back for dinner, of course, probably with Jane or Roxy or both in tow. So _why_ had you wanted to see him _now_ , doing _this_? You weren't worried, were you? Worried because you didn't think he was taking this whole "leading a scouting mission for the first time" thing seriously?)

You settle for innocent curiosity, and even though John raises his eyebrows he doesn't call your bluff.

He also doesn't send you back to the Infirmary, either. Instead, he sighs and grumbles something about how you and your brother are _clearly_ related because neither of you can stay put. Then he turns back to the field and says, "You might as well stick around for a while, now that you're here. If you're well enough to get this far, it won't be long until you're working with the rest of them." You follow him toward the outside edge of the fence because you're not sure what else to do. The rest of the time you're there, you get a running real-life director's commentary in your left ear that's actually kind of helpful.

The group is back together, now. Nepeta and the other guy (Equius, John tells you) are pairing people off and shooing them to different places on the field. Terezi and another Cured (some guy with glasses and poorly-dyed bangs you feel like you've seen somewhere before) end up in one corner, and Jake stays close to the center with Jade. You catch his eye and he grins, face still a mess. You wave back.

When the last two people are sectioned off, Nepeta grabs the back of Equius's shirt and launches herself up onto his shoulders. He doesn't flinch, and it's such a ridiculous sight that you half expect to hear scattered laughter while you, yourself, feel a snicker snort its way out of your nose. The field is tense and quiet, though, as Nepeta starts yelling again.

"Alright! You know the rules. No weapons! No biting, clawing, or bone-breaking! Stay inside the fence, and no bets! The goal here is to learn and grow and all that! But don't be pussies, either. If we think you're not working hard enough, either Equius or I will step in as your partner." You see a few people shift in place, and yeah—even you're starting to feel a little nervous. "In the meantime, the two of us will be walking around, critiquing and answering any questions. Ready? Go!"

The whole place erupts into barely-controlled chaos. 

It's a sparring exercise, but only in the sense that the whole place is _sort of_ supervised. If you didn't know any better you'd think it was a brawl. The hand-to-hand competence, though, is incredible. Disorganized as the whole thing might seem, everyone's moves are calculated and precise, and—from what you can tell—no one is holding back. The first person to go down takes a particularly nasty hit to his left side, but in seconds he's back up, winded and on the defense. You can't see Terezi and her partner well because they're on the other side of the field, but neither seems to be giving an inch, either. There are no handicaps in the real world.

But Jake and Jade—they're on another tier entirely. Even though Jade just walked in, fresh and ready to go, Jake is more than keeping up with her. From what you can tell, their styles are different due more to size than skill level, but she's easily blocking his full-force punches and he's not falling behind, unusually swift and graceful for someone so built. The dirt under their feet is a wreck. You're completely glued.

Suddenly you hear Nepeta say, "Four bags of tea on Harley," _much_ closer than you expect, and when you glance over you realize she's leaning on the fence next to John. Equius isn't with her, but you spot him a few yards away carefully walking a determined-looking young woman through the motions of some leg motion. He looks out of place as an instructor, but it seems to be working.

John shakes his head. "No deal. You and I both know he's going to get his ass kicked. And so does he." You blink a little, surprised, but don't say anything. You can't imagine Jake losing.

Nepeta just laughs. "Yeah, she cares about him too much to let him win." She turns to you, then, "Thanks for dragging her up here, by the way," and all you can do is shrug. "You two gonna stick around for the weapons bit? Jake's going to be a part of that group, too."

"No," John replies, frowning. "He needs to get back to his room, and I need to let Rose and Jane get back to their real jobs. There's not much I can do there, anyway, and I already know how good Jake is with a gun. Jade'll handle that one... just don't let her kill him."

"No promises." Nepeta pushes off the fence to head back into the fray, and when you glance back at the pair in question, Jake is getting up off the ground, wiping blood off his lip. 

* * *

 

In the end, Jade _destroys_ him.

The matches go on until Nepeta tells everyone to stop, and then everyone lines up according to how many points they'd received over the last half hour.

(Throughout it all, John gives you a rundown of how the whole thing works. Points are awarded for hits and dodges beyond a certain individual baseline quota designated by Jade or Jake or Nepeta. The more points a person has by the end of the week, the higher their quota for the next. People who don't make their quota are assigned extra tasks or penalty exercises, the severity and frequency of which decrease the more points an individual has. The three people with the highest number of points are exempt. When he's done, you decide it's probably good that you figure all this out now, and not the first day you're thrown into the pile with everyone else.)

Jade is the first in line, with Jake and Terezi's sparring partner in second and third, but Jade steps off to the side after the initial count because of an obvious technicality—she wasn't even supposed to be part of today's training anyway.

After Nepeta sets the bottom few running around the field, the group disperses, and Jake makes a beeline over to you and John. He looks worn out but still somehow full of energy. "Strider! Holy fucking mackerel, I can't believe you broke out," he laughs. "It's good to see you up and about like a free man."

John rolls his eyes. "It's not like I'm holding him captive or anything. It's for his own good."

"Yes, yes—of _course_. But sometimes a bloke's got to take the reins and decide what's best for himself, am I right?" Jake laughs again, throwing a wink in your direction while John cracks a small smile. He seems more relaxed, now—less fierce. You have no idea how Jake could joke around with his cousin after what you'd seen, though.

(And you choose to ignore the wink entirely.)

"You look like shit," you say, but Jake just beams.

"What's a little roughhousing without some mud and blood, eh? Kid stuff, that's what." You're not sure how to respond to that, but it turns out you don't have to because he just keeps talking. "I've got some time before the new lot convenes for round two, if you both want to get a quick bite to eat. Breakfast ought to be starting soon."

As much as you'd like to say yes (because you're starving, _duh_ ) you don't really feel like you get a say in whether or not you're _allowed_ to go (which kind of annoys you, but you get it), so you look up at John and raise your eyebrows. He frowns, glances between both of you, and after a moment says, "Maybe another time. We're heading back that way, though, so if—"

A shrill, panicked voice cuts him off from behind.

" _John!_ Good God, we've been trying to reach you for the past—oh." You turn around just in time to see Jane skid to a halt at the top of the gently sloping hill you'd walked down with Jade, red-faced and _clearly_ winded. She blinks, mouth open, and then you can practically _see_ her puff up like a royally-pissed-off pigeon as she stares directly at you. "What the _freaking heck_ , Dirk?"

_Shit_.

In an instant, she's barreling down toward the three of you, a tiny whirlwind of _total rage_ , and Jake and John start guffawing so loud and hard they both have to grab onto the fence to keep upright. "This makes my job so much easier," John wheezes out, but as soon as she's in front of you she hones in on him.

"And _you_! I've been messaging you for ages and you _haven't responded once_. Of all the irresponsible—I can't _believe_ —Oh my _God_ ," she fumes, and you realize you've never actually seen Jane angry before. Miffed, sure. But _pissed_? Nah. (And even though the her family is clearly amused, you make a mental note to never, _never_ get on her bad side.)

John calms down some and ruffles her hair, at which she looks significantly less than pleased. "Alright, alright—I'm sorry, I should have let you know that he snuck up here."

"Yes, you should have," she huffs. "Jake, stop laughing. You look like you've been hit by a car."

He grins. "Why, thank you!"

* * *

 

The three of you end up heading back in the general direction of the Infirmary together. Halfway there, though, your head starts spinning and your legs decide to just _nope_ out. When you hit the ground, you'll admit you start low-key panicking (and Jane and Jake work themselves up into a frenzy around you), but John doesn't seem particularly freaked. "Adrenaline crash," he says, and helps you onto his back without much fanfare. "You were up all night—don't even try to deny it—and on top of that and everything else you've done more physical work this morning than in the last ten or so days combined. Honestly, I'm surprised you made it this far." The other two don't calm down much after that, though.

By the time Jane and Jake split off to the building across from where you're going (the Cafeteria, apparently, where Jane has to work now that John is on his way back) you're so exhausted you don't even want to eat with him— _them_ —anymore, which is actually incredibly lame. Instead, you're looking forward to a straight crash directly into bed where you can sleep for a solid fourteen hours. Neither seem particularly upset by this, and the general consensus seems to suggest that's a really fucking _great_ idea based on the fact that Jane tells you to rest up when she waves goodbye, and Jake says you look like you need it. Wouldn't want to disappoint.

But when you and John are a few feet from the Infirmary door you realize rest isn't going to happen, because you can already hear the shouts from your _very_ loud, _very_ pissed-off older brother.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! I had some fun playing around with Dirk as a POV character, something I've done in draft chapters but never been happy enough with to make the final cut. It's also been a while since we saw Jade! Looks like she's just as emotionally disjointed as the rest of her family. 
> 
> Anyway, first things first: fanart! [Nariririri](http://nariririri.tumblr.com/) on tumblr drew another [**BEAUTIFUL PIECE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/132508279542/nariririri-they-didnt-really-cover) for this story, this time of John and Meenah from chapter eight! She's wonderfully talented and you guys should definitely check out her stuff.
> 
> If you have anything you want to show me or just have comments about the story, I track the tag **freightstuck** on tumblr, as well as my url tag [**egbertiian**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/). You can also find a collection of all the fanart I've been able to find for this story, a complete character profile list, and a few extra tidbits on my blog as well! And you're always welcome to message me with questions or comments. (Especially if I don't reblog something about the story within a day or two!) 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. I try to get back to as many of you guys as I can, but even if I don't reply please know that I read and cherish everything you write. You guys are the ones who keep me motivated to continue on with this story and, by extension, keep my passion for storytelling alive. I'm so, so, so grateful to all of you, and I love you all. <3


	15. Heart of Stone

**== > DAVE: DROP DEAD**

Okay, maybe that's a  _little_ dramatic, even for you. But damn, you're starting to think death by boredom might actually be a thing that's possible. It's been... how long since you woke up? One week? Two? You can't even remember at this point—trapped in the same white, stone-walled twelve-by-twelve room, time is starting to blur together. Intermittent visits from Terezi and John have been your only real source of entertainment, and even that's a stretch. You've taken to sleeping at odd hours of both day and night, forcing your body into oblivion when you can't take your intimate relationship with the patterns on the ceiling any more. This  _has_ to be illegal. Cruel isolation of prisoners or some shit. Geneva Convention-level neglect.

You thought safety would've been a welcome change, but now you're not sure which hell is worse: here, or Houston.

So no one could blame you for wanting to break out, right?

(You sigh, blowing hot air into the sheets you've cocooned yourself under and accidentally inhaling some of your weird not-actually-dyed-but-still-worthy-of-a-scene-kid hair when it flops back into your face. It's getting long, now—almost long enough to tuck behind your ears—and you'd kill for a pair of scissors.)

True accountability for your actions or not, you'd done it and there were consequences—petty bullshit, you think, but still punishment.

Last night, after you'd wrecked your nose and split your lip on the stairwell steps, John and Dirk had stayed with you until the bleeding stopped. By then, you'd been pretty impressively covered, and both John's shirt and the towel Jake had brought were ruined. (You don't really remember Jake leaving because you were pretty fucking out of it, but one minute he was there and the next he wasn't.) The three of you had sat in almost total silence, John curtly telling you to tilt your head back or asking if you were dizzy every now and then, until eventually he'd told your silent brother to go to bed. Dirk hadn't said anything back, but he'd hesitated—not long, but enough for you to notice. And then you and John were alone.

(The fact that Dirk hadn't questioned him, had just done what he was told, seemed strange. Your brother was quiet, sure—but he had a strong character. He was a fighter. So either he had some serious respect for this guy, or he was scared.)

After your brother's door had closed behind him, John had stood from the step he'd been sitting on—you were still leaned up against the wall, him next to you at the bottom of the stairwell—and stretched. Through the window you'd seen a grayness that hadn't been there before, and you'd wondered just how long you'd been off your game. (Everything had still smelled like blood, though. Even now, thinking about it, you can't help but cringe a little.)

"Alright, let's go." John had said, and you'd blinked up at him. "Can you stand?"

You'd nodded and done your best, but the minute you'd gotten yourself upright you'd needed to look at your hands to grip the stair railing and almost gone down again. And holy  _fuck_ . The blood had been everywhere. Your palms were scraped up from the black sandpaper strips on the steps that had reminded your half-focused brain of skateboard griptape, and the white undershirt you'd been given (that blended in almost hilariously with your almost-printer-paper skin) to wear was totally fucked.

And then suddenly John had your arm over his shoulder and he was moving forward. "Don't think about it," John had said, and even though his voice was tense and you knew he was pissed, it had sounded sincere. He'd hauled you up to your room (prison cell) pretty quickly after that, and you weren't much help along the way. It was kind of embarrassing, actually—how easily you'd just  _crumbled._

He'd gotten right to work cleaning you up, which in some ways was surprising. He was still shirtless, and you think if you'd been in a better frame of mind you could have made some really choice comments while he'd pulled off your own ruined clothes. Instead, you'd stayed mostly quiet while he stripped you down to your underwear, found the metal hooks in your pocket, and sighed. He'd made that face you've seen him do more than a few times—the one where he pushes his glasses up and presses on the bridge of his nose with his eyes scrunched up—and somewhere in the back of your mind you thought he looked exhausted. The sun was just starting to rise outside, he'd said he needed to be somewhere early in the morning, and you knew (because you'd been pseudo-stalking him) that he hadn't slept in a while.

You'd thought, then, about what Roxy had told you. The whole thing still left a nasty taste in your mouth, but you'd started to think maybe there was some real truth to it all.

"Did Terezi bring these in to you?" John had asked, and you'd shaken your head like some kid getting scolded by the school principal. And that pissed you  _off_ . You're twenty-fucking-four, you'd been though some serious shit, and even though this guy had saved your life he had no right look down on you, to  _talk_ _down_ to you.

"Lock a guy up in the same room for days with nothing to do and he'll cook something up," you'd bitten out, spitting dried blood in John's direction. He'd seemed unfazed, expression hard and unflinching.

"Like I said, I had my reasons. I still do, which means nothing is going to change. You're a danger both to others and yourself, as you've so  _clearly_ proved."

"I am  _not_ a fucking  _danger_ . I—"

"That's my call, not yours. You had to have gotten these—" he'd shaken the pins in his hand, then, "—from in here if someone didn't give them to you."

" _Listen_ to me—"

He'd glanced around the bare room, ignoring you and instead taking in everything—the lights overhead, your mattress, and the goddamn motherfucking blinds. "I guess I should have seen something like this coming." One pull of the string was enough to tell him that they were broken, and soon they were off the window and in his hand. You'd been  _fuming_ , but there was nothing you could do, not really. Run? Fight? That wouldn't help, and if anything just make the whole situation worse. You'd felt helpless. "I'll bring you a change of clothes and some water so you can wash yourself off," and then he'd closed the door.

When he'd returned, you didn't even acknowledge that he was in the room, and after a moment of silence he'd left without saying a word.

A little while later, the rest of the building had started waking up, and you were left to wallow once again in complete and total tedium. Voices had floated up through the hall that sounded familiar enough but that you couldn't put a face to, and eventually you'd heard someone come up from downstairs and stop in front of your door. They never entered the room, though—instead, they'd just stayed outside so long that every now and then you'd forget they were even there. A fucking sentry.

Now, you're half-buried under your sheets in some half-assed attempt to block out the morning sun. It hurts like a  _bitch_ , and you feel a little bit like you've got a bad hangover what with how your head hurts and your eyes sting and everything is spinning ever-so-slightly. Not to mention how sore your whole goddamn face is where you'd smashed it.

It's been a few hours, but you're still wired enough that sleep for the sake of something to do is out of the question, so instead you end up idly listening to conversations in the hall. Food comes and goes, but no one brings you any, and you eventually figure out that John really has gone off and left someone else to watch the place while he's gone. That's probably why you've got a babysitter.

Just the thought of him starts to get you riled up and angry again. John is an asshole, you decide. Intimidating leader of a small country with so-called good intentions or not, he's huge jerk, and part of you wonders if Roxy's conviction in his character is just the result of some pseudo-Stockholm syndrome. Sure, he'd seemed kinder, more open over Pesterchum all those months ago, but anyone can put on a face to get their way. And he'd definitely had his frigid moments even then. You resolve to not play along with her weird little pal-scheme.

Eventually, you just sort of... zone out. Not really doing anything but not quite unconscious, either. You're tired and annoyed and you doubt anyone is going to come for you any time soon. Every now and then you'll hear snippets of noise, but you don't pay attention to what they're saying. The person outside your door doesn't say anything, but they don't move either.

You wonder whether or not you're a masochist for wishing something terrible would happen.

And then suddenly there's a loud  _slam_ from the hallway, like a door being thrown open with too much force and hitting the wall behind it, and someone runs past your doorway. A feminine voice farther down the hall calls out, "Jane?" and the frantic footsteps slow down to a stop.

"Have you seen Dirk?" a second voice—you're assuming Jane (and you wonder if it's the Jane who's John's sister)—asks, a little out of breath, and suddenly you're a little more alert.

"No, he was in his room the last time I checked. Maybe he left to use the restroom?"

"I checked. No one said anything when I knocked, so I took a peek inside and it was empty."

"That  _is_ troubling. Do you know how long he's been gone?" The voices start getting closer, like they're walking back down the hall.

"I've been in with Vriska for the past half hour... Mr. Slick?" They stop near your door. "Did anyone else come up from the first floor?"

A gruff voice right outside grunts, "Nah, just you," and you assume that's your bodyguard. He doesn't say anything else.

There's a pause, and then Jane sighs, "Oh my," so quietly you almost miss it from under your sheets, and in the pause before she continues on to say, "I'll get ahold of John.", you throw them off and move toward your door.

The other voice hums. "He shouldn't be up and around for a multitude of reasons, and if he's left the building there are even more potential risks."

And it occurs to you then—much, much later than you think it should have—that you don't know if Dirk is getting the same treatment you are. You know he's allowed visitors because you'd seen it, and you know he's allowed out of his room... but without supervision? You don't know. And even if he's been given that freedom, who's to say he isn't still trapped in the building?

("...He's not answering. I'm going to go see if John left his phone downstairs," Jane says, but before the other woman has a chance to respond her footsteps echo off into the stairwell.)

And as  _pissed off_ as you are about being a prisoner yourself, the thought of your brother spending his time holed up and cramped the same way you are makes you  _livid_ . On some level, you get why you're in here—you'd attacked someone without real reason and seriously injured her.

(And you really do feel pretty shitty about that whole thing, but at the same time you can't forget just how fucking  _freaked_ you were when you'd seen her.)

("I will run one last pass through the first floor rooms just in case," the woman left behind says, but you're not really sure who she's talking to because Jane is gone now. Your babysitter, maybe? A moment later, her footsteps go quiet, too.)

But Dirk? There's no way he'd done anything like that—no fucking way. He's always calm under pressure, he doesn't have your temper, and he's just too fucking gentle (no matter how much he tries to convince you and the rest of the world that he's an emotionless rock).

There are hundreds of reasons why that just  _wouldn't_ _happen_ , why it  _couldn't_ .

Which means he's not a convict, he's a  _captive_ .

And they  _lost him_ .

You're in the middle of Washington state just north of  _buttfuck nowhere_ , and they  _lost him_ .

You think you're finally starting to realize just what kind of  _group_ this is, and you don't like it. You want  _out_ .

And you want out  _now_ .

You throw your shoulder against the door as hard as you can, slamming into it with your whole body weight. Your head still hurts and you know, rationally, that this is a  _terrible_ idea, but you don't give two shits at this point what your logical brain thinks. So you do it again. And again. And again. Someone—Slick?—starts yelling, and then  _you_ start yelling back even though you're not really listening to what he's saying.

"Open this  _goddamn door_ —You  _lost_ him? Let me the  _fuck_ out! Let me the  _fuck_ out _right now_ !" The door doesn't budge, but you keep shouting and beating until you don't even know what you're saying anymore.

And then suddenly you realize it's gone silent on the other side.

"Dave?" It's John's voice, and he sounds so  _calm_ you can't help but seethe.

"Where's Dirk?" you yell, and you're fully prepared for some bullshit answer, ready to cut him off before he even finishes.

But instead he says, "He's right here with me," and you just kind of stop.

"What?"

"He went up to the other side of camp to watch this morning's training, and we just made the walk back."

"What?"

"Jesus, you're articulate this morning," John snorts, and you don't have a good response to that so you just kind of... sink to the ground like all the air has been sucked out of you. "Are you calm now?" He's talking down at you again, and  _God_ , even though you're suddenly so  _exhausted_ he still somehow manages to keep you seething.

"No, I'm not fucking  _calm_ . Let me  _out_ , goddamn it." You're still on the floor, though. "And I don't trust the shit you say at this point, anyway."

There's a pause, and you're not sure what you're expecting to hear next but it's definitely not your brother's voice. "You're being an asshole, Bro," he says, and he sounds tired. "Like, consistently. To everyone."

Your first thought is to shout at him, too—to tell him to  _fuck off_ because he doesn't know what he's talking about, but then you catch yourself because why the  _hell_ would you say that to  _him_ ? You're just... angry. Frustrated and angry and hurt and  _scared_ underneath it all, because you're stuck in the same damn room with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, because everything hurts all the time, because you're bored out of your damn mind and alone with your thoughts, because  _so much_ happened  _so quickly_ and now everything is different. And it's justified, right?

(But a voice in the back of your head reminds you that you can't remember the last time you weren't at least one of those things, not since you got here.)

Dirk keeps talking. "You've been erratic and volatile in the worst possible ways since you regained consciousness, and it's unsettling. And... kind of frightening?" The last part is muffled, and it comes out more like a question than anything else. It's so unusual to hear your l'il man uncertain about  _anything_ that you stop.

And you start to wonder—quietly, hesitantly, tiredly—if your appearance isn't the only thing that's warped and  _wrong_ . If it's not just your sight and your hearing and your smell and your hair and your skin. What if it's  _you_ ? What if  _who you are_ has changed, too? Like you've become this gross, monstrous bastardization of yourself?

"I'm sorry," he says. "It's just the truth."

Everything just goes kind of quiet, then.

You don't know how long you sit there, crumpled on the floor with your hands fisted in your hair, but after a while the door slowly opens. You're half-leaned against it, so when there's nothing left to support you your body slumps to the side—but your head doesn't hit the ground. Instead, something soft keeps you propped up. It has that same familiar smell that seems comforting in some far off way, and when you open your eyes (you don't remember closing them?) you decide you're hallucinating because it looks like John is on the floor with you, holding your head in his lap the best he can given how tightly you're curled in on yourself.

Everything is blurry and bright, and yeah, you're definitely losing your mind. Because your face is wet and the first sound that comes out of your mouth sounds scratched up and cracks halfway through but you  _never_ cry.  _Never_ . Your chest is heaving. Your whole body feels like it's on fire. "What's happening to me?" you say again and again, like a mantra, and after a while it doesn't even sound like your voice anymore. Like there's someone else speaking for you, articulating your worst fears. Making them real. "What's happening to me?  _What's happening to me?_ What's happening to me?"

(This is it, you decide— _this_ is your breakdown. Not the thing you'd had at the bottom of the stairwell last night. That was mild—so,  _so_ mild compared to  _this_ . You feel like you're dying, sucking all the oxygen out of the room and suffocating.)

And somewhere far away you think you can hear John's voice, too. "I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out, but I don't know. I just don't know."

* * *

You don't remember falling asleep, but isn't that how it usually goes? You're in your bed and the room is dark, everything quiet save for sounds of someone moving around in a room down the hall and a soft, gentle snoring. For a moment, you wonder (hope) you'd just dreamed up the whole thing in a kind of nightmare born from your deepest doubts. Still half asleep, you twist your head up toward your window and see that your blinds are still missing. So  _that_ at least had been real.

Then you realize suddenly that the breathing isn't  _yours_ , and that wakes you right the fuck up.

You bolt upright a little too fast and it sets your head spinning, but  _there's someone else in your room and_ —

There's a lump on the floor of the room's far corner, left of the door, and you blink a little bit because there's no way, right? You're probably still asleep. Because why would  _he_ be  _here_ ?

John is wedged against the wall, lying on his back with his left arm tucked behind his head. His glasses are bent at a weird angle that can't possibly be anything close to comfortable because they look like they're digging into his nose, and his mouth is hanging open, slack-jawed as he quietly snores. There's an open book face-down on his chest like he'd fallen asleep reading, and a mug of something that's probably long gone cold at his side.

You just sort of stare for a moment, because you really can't believe it. But he doesn't disappear and you don't wake up, so you figure maybe you  _aren't_ dreaming. The whole thing feels surreal.

Your stomach lets out a terrible gurgling noise that's so loud against the stillness you jump a little, enough to make your mattress squeak, and John inhales sharply. There's a beat of silence and you hold your breath, hoping you haven't woken him up because you're really not mentally prepared to deal with him right now.

"Dave?"

No dice.

He shifts, humming a little bit as he moves, and the hardcover hits the floor with a  _thud_ just loud enough to ensure that if he wasn't awake before, he probably is now. "Man, what time is it—" he mumbles, lifting up the arm that had been behind his head and squinting at the watch on his wrist in the pitch dark. "—'m not sure what I expected." As you watch, frozen like a dumbass deer caught in truck headlights, he pushes himself up into a sitting position and fishes a phone out of his pocket. "God, that's bright."

Your gut growls again.

He looks up at you then, still squinting, glasses still askew, a little bit of drool at the corner of his mouth reflecting the light from his cell, and you can't help but wonder if there are  _two_ Johns wandering around this fucked up place because he'll shout and fight and say some really horrible, heavy shit and then go and pull stuff like  _this_ .

"'Sup."

"He speaks!" John chuckles, and it's a warm, comfortable sound that you don't really know how to react to.

"What are you doing here?" You ask, because you can't think of anything else to say and it seems like as good a place as any to start.

"Sleeping, apparently," he snorts back. "Although that wasn't really the plan." He starts to stand up, cracking his back and stretching his arms as he goes, but doesn't elaborate.

"That doesn't answer my question."

He shrugs. Your stomach makes another noise, and you exhale through your nose because it really needs to quit doing that, you're trying to have a conversation for Christ's sake.

John snorts again. "Hungry?"

"Uh."

"It's been over a day since you had anything to eat, so I'm going to say yeah, probably. You passed out yesterday and I didn't want to wake you up, 'cause I figured you probably wore yourself out and needed the sleep. Here—I'll be right back."

Before your brain catches up, he's gone, and you end up calling a strained, "Wait—!" to a closed door. You don't hear the lock turn, and you're left sitting in the dark, even more mixed up than before.

Just when you've convinced yourself the whole thing was some weird, half-asleep hallucination, the door opens again (how long was he gone?) and John's huge frame is silhouetted against the dimly lit hallway. "Sorry that took so long. Lucky for you it's just about lunch time down there, unlucky for me I had to wait in line."

"Lunch...?" a second later, your brain catches up. "Oh. For the nocturnal folk."

He laughs again, and now you think you've heard him do that more in the last however-long than your entire time here. "Folk? Wow, you really  _are_ from the south."

You huff, but you're a little too distracted to be as annoyed as you'd like because  _damn_ , whatever he's got on the tray in his hand smells  _good_ . Your stomach seems to agree.

He leaves the door open and sets the tray in your lap, moving just faster than  _actually_ sluggish but still like he's got a weight on his back. "...Thanks."

"Mhmm," John hums, nodding a little. He lingers next to you for just a second before returning to his spot on the floor. There's a  _chink!_ and a muffled  _Oh, shit_ , when he accidentally bumps the mug (without spilling it, impressively) still sitting where he'd left it, but other than that he's quiet.

The sandwich is warm, filled with soft vegetables and thick slices of a meat you don't really recognize all piled between two cuts of what's probably homemade bread, and you regret ever thinking this place was anything like hell. It's gone in less than a second, and you down the water you've been given just as quickly.

When you glance up, John is just watching you, and if you weren't so distracted you'd probably be a little more uncomfortable about that than you are. Instead, you mumble through a full mouth, "You snooze, you lose, dude." He hadn't brought any food for himself.

He waves a hand in the air and then reaches for the mug. "I ate earlier, don't worry." And when he takes a sip, he makes a face, so you figure whatever is in it tastes weird at room temperature.

You're reminded again of what Roxy had told you a few days ago, and wonder just how much truth there is to what he says, creepy captor-worship aside. But you beat the thought down because why the  _fuck_ should you care? You're not sure what his motives are with this whole farce, what he wants from you. It's got you on edge and you don't like it, because you feel powerless not knowing what you should do. Maybe  _that's_ his game. To make you totally dependent on the times he's  _nice_ .

You swallow your last bite. "Your loss, it's good." You won't let him win that easily.

For a few minutes, the two of you just sit there together in the darkness, neither making any effort to start up another real conversation. Last night had been a new moon—you'd seen that much on the stairwell—so there's still hardly any natural light to work with, but just like before you can see fairly well. Colors are a little skewed and everything's still  _dark_ , somehow, but John's face is clear enough for you to see that he's still sort of watching you. His gaze is turned slightly to the left, but it's close enough to feel a little unnerving. 

(It reminds you of Terezi—how she doesn't  _need_ to look in someone's direction when she has a conversation because there's nothing to gain from it, but she'll make the effort because on some level it makes the person she's talking to feel more comfortable. Like everything is normal.)

You decide to ask him again why he's here, but before you can say anything he starts to stand.

"I should bring these back to the Cafeteria," he says, chipper enough to grate on your nerves, and you just nod. If he's leaving, you're not going to complain.

There's still no real urgency to his movements, and you wonder why he doesn't flip the overhead lights to make things easier on himself. When he collects the tray in your lap without an issue you're a little surprised, but then again he'd gotten it there in the first place without you realizing that he probably couldn't see shit.

And it's frustrating beyond belief, because you  _want_ to be pissed. You  _want_ to yell and ask a thousand questions and accuse him of fucking with your head. You want tell him to turn a  _goddamn_ light on, please, because then you'll have tangible justification for biting his huge, egotistical head off. And right now you  _don't_ because he's being so aggravatingly  _considerate_ that you almost (almost! But not quite) feel like an asshole.

(You try not to think about how gentle he was when he held your head as you cried, how he'd apologized over and over again for something beyond his control. How it felt like, in that moment, you weren't alone.)

He locks the door, and you hope you imagine the muffled apology that follows.

* * *

**  
[6/10/37]**

You spend the rest of the night awake, once again bored out of your fucking skull until the sweet, sweet embrace of oblivion cradles you in her downy arms just a few hours after the sun starts showing its ugly mug. Terezi wakes you up when she visits later in the afternoon, feigning complete and total innocence when you snap at her about your beauty sleep. _You_ know _she_ knows that _you_ know _she_ knew you were comatose because _you_ know that _she_ knows that _you_ know she can hear you breathing through the walls or some freaky shit like that (just like you), but you're glad to see someone other than John so you let her fill you in on what you've missed.

She corroborates John claim that your brother had been outside yesterday, and you get a second—possibly third—hand account of how he'd snuck off behind everyone's back. You're a little proud when you hear that, but the situation rubs you the wrong way until she mentions he'd been there to watch training again this morning, largely unsupervised and "legal".

The two of you talk until lunch rolls around, when she decides to head off and find food for herself. She's gone for all of three minutes before she busts back through the door and tosses something at your face (that you catch before it hits). First Roxy, now this. You see a pattern starting to emerge, and you don't like it. "Ran into John downstairs and he said to give this to you. Now I don't have to sit in the same room and smell your disgusting, unshowered physique anymore."

It's a cell phone.

"That's my manly musk," you say. "Trademarked  _Eau de Swag_ . One-hundred-percent guaranteed total bitch flockage to my many satisfied customers," but the door has already closed. Her laughter echoes through the hallway, though, and you know she heard.

(John doesn't come to re-lock the door after she leaves, but the guard from yesterday is back and that's enough to set you off brooding for a while. You try not to dwell too much on it, though, Dirk's words still fresh in your mind.)

The phone looks brand new, so you figure your old one must have been left behind with the rest of your stuff back in Wyoming. It's nice as shit, though, so you're definitely not complaining. The one you'd had was several years old even  _before_ the whole world went and got itself fucked in the ass, so it was well past its twilight by the time it finally met its end. It had essentially saved all of your asses, though, so you're a little disappointed you didn't get the chance to give it a real hero's funeral.

Your new toy is fully charged when you turn it on, and even though there's no service you've got five bars of internet connectivity. God bless. The Pesterchum app is already installed, but that's all—it's still got the nasty default wallpaper and everything, so the first thing you do it take full advantage of the frozen World Wide Web and save yourself the physical pain of looking at it any longer than you have to.

When you finally log into the chat client, you're immediately flooded with notifications. Because you've signed in on a new device, you get an alert from the same public memo board that had led you here in the first place, as well as a few new messages that you haven't seen before with a collective timestamp more than two weeks old. All of your old logs are still saved on the online server and they automatically load, so it's like you're picking right back up where you left off what feels like a literal eternity ago.

— arachnidsGrip [AG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 17:13 — 

AG: Apparently I should 8e thanking you, 8ecause the cavalry just showed up and the rest of us might live through this.

AG: I don't know if you're dead or what, 8ut my phone says these messages are sending so I guess it doesn't matter.

AG: Dirk tried to text you yesterday, 8ut nothing went through. Things are working now 8ecause John has the same thing we found, which I guess you have now.

AG: He and Pyrope are 8oth messed up pretty 8ad, 8ut he's not changing colors so we're all taking that as a good sign.

AG: Dirk, not John.

AG: You're a huge pain in the ass 8ut I hope you're still alive.

AG: John is going to look for you now.

AG: The rest of us are heading 8ack with everyone else.

AG: So thanks.

 — arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 17:40 —

It occurs to you then that you haven't heard from Vriska once since you got here. You know she's going through her own shit, though. _Heavy_ shit, from what you've heard, and you feel more than a little like total crap for not really thinking about her lately. As much as you hate to admit it, you hope she's alright. (Gamzee, too. You don't even know where he is right now, and that's a little disturbing.)

You also wish you knew a little more about what actually happened after your brother and the rest made their break for safety. Terezi has really been your only source of information, and the last thing she remembers before waking up here is essentially the same stuff you have to work with: setting up camp in the forest and  _chaos out of nowhere_ . She'd apparently passed out before she and the others made it into town. You don't know how or when Dirk got hurt, where John found them... anything. You've been living to much in the present moment, you haven't really had time to consider anything from  _before_ . It all seems so far away now.

You scroll back up to the top of the app, just for kicks, and try to figure out who's online. Terezi's icon is yellow, along with your brother, Jade, Jake (who you never actually spoke to, but have in your contact list anyway), and John. Karkat, Nepeta, and Sollux are all understandably offline, and the fact that Gamzee and Vriska are gone even at this time of day makes you wonder whether or not they've still got their phones. Roxy's not around, either, and that strikes you as a little weird.

Your conversation pool is a little bare, then. TZ, Jake, and John are each out for their own reasons, and even though you  _want_ to talk to Dirk you have no idea what to say. You end up just sort of staring at the screen for a while, not really sure what to do. For the first time in  _days_ you have the freedom to actually  _talk_ to someone instead of just waiting for a mercy visit at any odd hour of day or night, and you don't have a clue what to do with it.

Eventually you don't have to make a decision at all, because someone decides to message you first. Only you have no idea who the fuck it is.

— tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 13:46 —

TT: Dave Strider?

TG: the one and only

TG: who seeks an audience on this disastrously sunshiny afternoon?

TT: My name is Rose Lalonde. John passed your contact information along to me most likely in hopes that I would strike up a conversation to keep you company in my down time. I'm under the distinct impression you haven't been receiving a particularly diverse influx of social calls lately.

TT: And it's more often than not my job to ensure the demonstrative stability and psychological comfort of those living here.

TG: lalonde

TG: as in roxy lalondes mom?

TT: Yes, that is correct.

TT: I regret not formally introducing myself sooner, but every instance of contact we've had thus far has been during what seem to be particularly tumultuous times for you, emotionally speaking.

TG: okay but if youre in charge of psychological wellbeing or whatever the fuck

TG: the most productive thing to do would probably be idk get me out of solitary confinement

TG: and yeah sorry as much as it literally physically pains me to admit i haven't been in top form lately

TT: I was not under the impression you were henceforth detained, in quarantine or otherwise. Although, if that were the case even now, I have the presence of mind to assume there is enough evidence to support the necessity of such.

TT: I will, however, take the matter up with our dear leader if you would like. You seem coherent enough for your requests to warrant consideration.

TG: what was this a test or something

TG: god youre just as much of an arrogant prick as he is

TG: only with a longer vocabulary list of verbal bullshit to vomit up in a chat window

TT: Not particularly. Our past encounters have put me under the impression that you're prone to flights of near-berserk rage, during which times you are less than rational in every sense of the phrase.

TT: And I resent the accusation of being a so-called arrogant prick. You are, in fact, the one calling himself "Godhead".

TG: did you get my digits from that asshole just so you could smear my good name through a stupid im client

TG: is there any actual point to this or are you seriously just fucking with me

TT: Whether fortunately or unfortunately for you, I have no intention of doing anything close to intimate with you in mind, fucking or otherwise. I am and always have been partial to soft bosoms and gracefully clefted mounds of the feminine persuasion.

TG: so tits and ass

TT: Indeed. Tits and ass.

TG: fucking incredible

And in a way, it kind of is. Not Rose's sexual leanings, but the fact that within minutes she's got you all figured out. She'll poke at you, get you riled up, and then say something to either placate your ego or change the topic altogether. You're so busy trying to keep up and throw back snippy comments of your own that you almost don't have time to stay irritated. It's totally different from talking with Terezi or Vriska or even those first conversations with John—more than just banter, it's a savage  _repartee_ that you're very nearly falling behind in. And even though you hate losing, you feel refreshed.

You talk for nearly an hour before Rose tells you she has to get back to work, and part with the promise to chat some other time.

And once again, you're left alone.

By now, the commotion of lunch time in the building has died down, and the muffled sounds of people moving around on both floors has faded to a kind of unusual quiet. The room is darker now—not quite  _nighttime_ dark, but definitely not the bright damnation of mid-afternoon. There's a hissing noise you almost don't realize you can hear because it's so constant your brain started blocking it out at some point, and it takes you a minute or two to pick up on the fact that it's raining outside. Nice.

You pass the next while using up as much battery life on your new phone as you can, making it your own. You're not totally convinced it's  _yours_ , per se, but you figure you might as well enjoy the whole being-connected-to-the-outside-world thing as much as possible. Most of that time is spent downloading music, something that sounds so sweet and beautiful and amazing you're not sure how you survived so long without it. Back in Houston, you hadn't been able to set up any kind of speaker system because of the noise, and headphones were dangerous because you couldn't hear what was going on around you. One earbud in while someone else was on watch was fine, sure, but you could never do that for too long without getting a headache. You hadn't even brought them with you when you left.

Now, though, it feels like you're hearing it all for the first time.

You almost want to cry.

(But you don't, thank God. You've done enough of that in the last few days to last a lifetime.)

You'd had to abandon a lot of what was left of yourself after leaving Texas, and you wonder for the first time if you can finally,  _finally_ start rebuilding, just a little. If you can have hobbies without feeling afraid that they'll get you killed, friends without worrying every day that they'll die around the next corner, and a place to stay for longer than a few nights. A  _home_ . Someplace—no matter how small—that you can call your  _own_ .

For all the anger you've built up over being stuck in a room by yourself, not once over the last week have you felt real, actual, genuine  _fear_ . Not while your head's on straight, at least.

You doze off listening to a violin cover of some ancient pop song over the sounds of the rain outside.

* * *

 

When you wake up again, the phone battery is dead but you don't think _too_ much time has passed because it's still pouring, and even though the light is dimmer, the sun hasn't set. You also decide that you _hate_ sleeping.

Realistically, you know your body has six years' worth to catch up on, but you can't help but feel like you've missed out on something important every time you rouse. And you don't like the heaviness that comes immediately after you rejoin the living—the sluggishness. It makes you restless.

You spend the next few minutes pacing around your room like a caged zoo animal, stretching your legs and wishing you had someplace to run. Or at least walk. God, you wish John would just let you out already.

After you've officially driven yourself stir-crazy, you get up close to the door and listen. The guard is still there, but you wonder if it's still unlocked from when TZ left. Rose's message shoves its way right up to the front of your brain, then, and you wish you could double check because there's no way you remember it right. And if you do, it might just be that she'd heard a different story from the reality you've been living. Ugh, you should have asked while you had the chance.

At this point, though, you don't really have anything to lose. What's John going to do, stop feeding you?

(As much as you really doubt it, you can't help but wonder.)

So you decide to try.

The doorknob turns easily. So easily, in fact, that you just kind of stand there for a second waiting for someone to jump through the fucking window and piledrive you into shitty linoleum floor for touching it. Nothing happens except for the sounds of shifting fabric on the other side of the wall, though, so you go for a homerun and push it open slowly.

Still no SWAT team.

"It's about goddamn time," a voice says to your right, and you think your heart stops for a second. But it's just(?) the guard, a rough-looking middle-aged man with a scar trailing almost completely down the left side of his face and a patch covering that eye. He's wearing a felt hat like something straight out of a black-and-white mobster movie and a white button-down over fraying black slacks, leaning slouched against the wall with his arms crossed. There's a huge hunting knife at his hip, but other than that he's unarmed. You blink at him and he doesn't tackle you.

"I'm... allowed to leave?" you ask, still not really believing it, but the empty hallway is right there in front of you and doorknob is still in your hand.

"The kid didn't tell ya?" He raises his right eyebrow and looks at you like you've just said pandas live in Kenya.

"Who, Terezi?"

"No, renegade Gandhi from downstairs. He didn't tell ya that shit was open?" You can't tell if he's serious or not, so you just shake your head. "Damn, he's worse than me. I woulda just said somethin' like  _leave if ya dare_ and let ya sit on that for a while."

"Leave if you dare?" That doesn't sound comforting.

"Jesus, are ya just gonna stand there or are we actually goin' somewhere? I've been standin' here all day and my damn legs are stiff." He unfolds himself, then, and cracks his neck to the side. "Ya can't leave the buildin' yet, but then again I dunno why you'd want to. Shit's downright unpleasant outside. I'm at least glad I got off patrol for this job. Poor bastards still out there are probably hatin' themselves right about now." He chuckles a little, and you can't help but think that you really wouldn't want to get in a fight with this guy.

"So I can go downstairs?"

He shrugs. "If ya want. I gotta follow ya, though, just in case ya start weepin' on the floor again or somethin'." He smirks when he says it, and even though you bristle a little you're glad he didn't say  _kill someone_ .

Suddenly, there's a crash from a room down the hall, followed immediately by someone screaming, " _Fuck this!_ " and the sound of glass breaking. "This is so fucking  _pointless!_ "

Sketchy Old Dude makes a  _tch_ noise with his tongue, and shakes his head. "Sounds like the cripple's finally showin' some backbone," he snickers. "'Bout damn time."

The smashing continues and then a door opens, flooding the hall with the noise. Someone you don't recognize (he's tall and gray and had his hair slicked back in a half-assed Mohawk) backs out of the room just as you hear John say, "Please, Tav, just—"

" _No!_ Don't you f-fucking  _dare_ look at me like that! I'm  _so fucking sick of this!_ Why didn't—why didn't you let me die?  _I can't even go down the goddamn stairs anymore!_ " The voice cracks, high-pitched and furious. " _Why didn't you let me die_ ?"

"Because you're my  _friend_ , God  _damn it_ , and I would rather have you in a wheelchair than burning in the fire pit out back!" John roars, and it's that same tone you'd heard that night on the stairwell—angry and hurt and worried all at once—only much, much louder.

"That's s-selfish and you know it."

(The person who had left has his back to the wall, now, and sinks to the floor. He's shaking.)

"I don't give a shit. We'll build ramps where we can and carry you where we can't. We'll move your room to the first floor—hell, I'll give you  _my_ room if you want it. It doesn't matter. We'll  _make this work_ ."

"We'll make this  _work_ ? I c-can't do my job anymore, John! I'm  _completely fucking useless!_ "

" _Fuck_ your job, Tavros. You're  _alive_ ."

" _Well what if I don't want to be?"_

Everything just kind of stops, then. The whole hall goes completely still save for the sounds of someone wheezing as hard as their lungs probably let them, and you're frozen. Everything's frozen.

And when John speaks again, it's quiet and hurting but it doesn't waver once.

"Then that's your choice, but unless it's because you can't cope with the  _world_ and not because you've  _given up on yourself_ , I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you keep on living."

A second passes, and then he's out in the hallway, slamming the door behind him. He walks past you without so much as a glance in your direction and disappears down the stairwell in silence.

(And the man on the floor puts his head on his knees and starts to cry.)

* * *

 

You stand there for a moment, listening to the muffled sniffles until a wail rises up from the room John just left and your escort lets out a low whistle. "Well, shit."

You don't know what to say.

You're strongly considering a retreat back into the relative safety of your cell, though.

But Sketchy Old Dude (you should probably figure out his actual name—Mr. Slick? Isn't that what you'd heard yesterday? It sounds so ridiculous you're not sure) decides for you. "C'mon, kid. Let's go. I don't wanna be up here watchin' this fuckin' soap opera anymore." He starts making his way toward the stairwell door and you figure you might as well follow, because he's right—even if you went back into your room, you'd still hear all the crying.

John is long gone, but the first floor hallway isn't empty. Once you're down there, you realize there are  _way_ more people on the first floor than the second. Not a real crowd by any means, but there are at least three people milling around and you can hear more conversations floating through closed doors. It's a little overwhelming, actually, and that combined with the shitty overhead fluorescent lights is enough to put you on edge. The room you think might be Dirk's is open, too, but you're too far away to tell if anyone is inside.

A short, black-haired girl with glasses is standing at the end of the hall talking to someone—dark hair and tan skin and a faded knit sweater with holes around the hems—but when she sees you she stops and stares at you for a second. "Dave?" Her voice sounds familiar. The guy she'd been talking to turns around, too, but he looks a little wary.

"It seems like everyone around here knows who I am. Like I've got a fucking fan club or something," you say, and Slick snorts.

The girl smiles at you, though, and starts making her way over toward the two of you while the other guy trails behind. (She stops a few feet away from you like she doesn't want to get too close, though, and for once you don't feel angry. No, it makes you kind of sad, just a tiny bit, because it's almost like she's  _scared_ of you even though she doesn't show it.)

"Oh, I'm sorry. I suppose you're something of a celebrity. We haven't had anyone new join us in a while, and you most especially have caused a bit of a stir," she hums, and you still can't quite pin down why you feel like you've seen her before. "I'm Jane, by the way. And this—" she nudges the man who'd stopped next to her "—is Kankri. How are you feeling?"

As in John's little sister? No wonder. Now that you really look at her, they look similar. Sort of. And wasn't she in the hall yesterday?

"Fabulous, never better."

She laughs. "Good, good. Glad to see you as well, Mr. Slick." Slick nods in response, and Jane just grins back while Kankri keeps eyeing you like you're going to jump on her any second. You want to tell him to just chill, dude—back off a little, will you? But you kind of get where he's coming from. She's tiny, and if you  _did_ fly off the handle you could really hurt her. (Shit, Jesus, why did you just think that? What the  _fuck_ .) "Have you eaten, Dave? Terezi said you were busy when I came around earlier for lunch, but I could bring you something later if you'd like. Dinner should be getting started soon—Kankri and I were just about to head over to the Cafeteria to help."

"Thanks, that'd be rad." Even though you really haven't been doing much, you're still somehow hungry. You're not sure whether you need the food or  _want_ it, though. The home-cooked meals you've been getting, sporadic though your  _feeding_ may be, have been some of the best you've had in years. Maybe you should tell her that? Would that make her more comfortable, or would it just be weird?

Something beeps, and Kankri jumps a little. Ever-vigilant as he may be toward you, you write him off pretty quickly as the type who doesn't get out much. Jane pulls a phone from her back pocket and hums. "Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Alright, well, it was nice to finally meet you in person!" She gives one last smile in your direction and pats Kankri's arm. "We're off."

When she passes Dirk's room, she shoots a wave through the doorway but doesn't say anything. You don't hear a reply, either. That doesn't mean much, though—your brother has always been a quiet kid. The third person who had been in the hall is gone now, leaving you and Slick relatively alone in the wake of the building's closing door, with only one real place to go if you don't want to head back upstairs.

Most of the rooms around you are either shut, empty, or full of people you don't recognize, and glancing around you wish maybe you'd come up with some kind of plan about what to say to your brother the next time you saw him. (Or the first time, really, because sitting in the dark well past midnight with blood all over your face and almost no verbal exchange doesn't really  _count_ , right?) You feel a little bit like a stupid bug being drawn to the mesmerizing glow of the porch lamp that is Dirk's open door. Like you're watching a bus accident, filled with dread but still for some sick reason walking toward it.

Slick shuffles along behind, hands in his pockets, watching you. He's not wearing the kind of shitty, accusing look Kankri had, though—not like he's waiting for you to fuck up, but instead do something interesting. You wonder if  _he's_ the one watching the bus accident, not you, and you wonder if that means you're the wreck.

When you finally peer into the room, you almost feel like you're spying on your brother, sneaking around as quietly as you can even though you don't really mean to. (Maybe that's your new body's way of responding to a fucked up situation, kind of like when you snuck out the last time? It's totally unintentional, but your bare feet aren't making any sound at all against the floor. All the noise is coming from Slick stomping around behind you.) 

The first thing you notice is the fact that his room is fucking trashed, and damn it, li'l man—you definitely raised him better than that. He has more furniture than you do, with a small nightstand against the wall next to his bed and a large, long table pushed up against one side of his mattress. There are two lamps—one on either surface—dimly lighting up the room with a soft orange glow against the haze coming from his open window, and even though you've been walking under the hallway lights your eyes still take a second to adjust to the new kind of brightness. All of the blankets have been pushed off the foot of the bed onto the floor, and almost every flat surface in an almost perfectly circular radius around Dirk himself is covered in wires, screws, long spokes and sheets of metal, miscellaneous hand tools, fabric, and what looks like it might be a deconstructed microwave. He's sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed, working at something in his lap with a screwdriver while his head bobs to a muffled rap beat blasting from the earbuds he's wearing.

And for a second, you don't recognize him.

On the stairs that night, you'd known it was him because in the dark and through your hazy, fucked up head he'd looked just the same. But now, in the lamplight and total clarity of coherency, you can see that he  _doesn't_ . His hair is shorter than the last time you saw him, cut above his ears at a length where all of his ridiculous cowlicks are at their most effective. And it's  _blonde_ . Pale, unnatural, California-beach-babe  _blonde_ . His whole complexion looks washed out, like he needs a week out in the sun, and he's lost some weight he probably couldn't afford to.

Dirk doesn't notice you at first, something you attribute both to the laser-focus he's got on whatever project he's working on and the music, but when he reaches over to get something from the larger table he glances up at you and freezes. You shove your hands in your pockets and glance around, because now that he's looking your way you can see his eyes, too—they're a vibrant, gold-orange color you've never seen before that almost seems to glow in the weird lighting.

(It's like someone just hung him out drenched in bleach, and now he's a brighter, lighter version of himself. Like a photograph that's been hanging in the window of a barbershop for almost a decade. Dark brown and beige to yellow and orange and white.)

"'Sup," you say. You're still standing in the hall, just outside his doorway.

He blinks at you for a second, then pulls his earbuds out. The music sounds louder and uncomfortably tinny now that it's not muffled. Slick leans back against the wall, like he had been outside of your own room, and crosses his arms.

The song ends. The room goes relatively quiet for a moment. And then Dirk says, "Jesus, Bro. You need a haircut."

Just like that, you feel your shoulders relax, and Slick snorts off to the side. "I'm trying something new. Didn't I teach you to respect others' life choices, li'l man? Have a little consideration for how I feel."

He rolls his eyes and sits back against the wall behind his bed, huffing a burst of air out through his nose. "You also made it exceptionally clear that  _spitting straight truth_ was always the best policy."

"You never actually followed that advice, though. Why start now?" Your mouth quirks up in a small smile without your consent, and you reach up to run your fingers through your hair. Unfortunately your almost-too-long-to-be-considered-bangs flop right back where they were.

"I find honesty is most effectively utilized in the application of sick burns that, when rooted in legitimacy, are inherently indisputable," he deadpans, and even after all these years you still can't tell whether or not he's being completely serious.

"Damn," you chuckle, "Glad to see some things haven't changed."

There's a moment of quiet while the two of you just look at each other, and then he says, "Although my outward appearance has been altered, I can assure my mind remains sharp." He pauses, reaches over to grab what he'd been going for before he'd noticed you, and turns back to the thing in his lap. "The question is—can the same be said for you?"

You don't have an answer to that, as much as you'd like to.

The music keeps playing.

"Isn't that a little loud?" you say instead, and even though he glances up at you he doesn't question the topic change.

"In some ways, yes. But it helps me concentrate because I don't have to listen to everything else." Not anything;  _everything._ That answers that, then, you think. He can hear it too—hear it  _all_ .

"Smart. Wouldn't expect anything less."

Dirk just shrugs. "Horuss gave them to me after I started the project. Progress was slow because my brain was trying to process six different conversations at once on top of the task at hand."

You don't know who Horuss is, but you feel like you should thank him for looking out for your brother, even in such a small way. "This shit ain't just for fun, then?" You wave your hand around a little, gesturing toward the mess.

"Although I do find the task enjoyable, it's not without purpose. Equius and Horuss have their hands full with their own daily responsibilities, and with my knowledge of mechanics it only made sense for me to help lighten the load. Building a wheelchair wasn't particularly difficult, and they welcomed my suggestion for electrical modifications to the preliminary design. It is, in a sense, the least I can do in repayment for the kindness this place has shown us thus far."

He says it so matter-of-factly you almost feel like an ass for asking. "We've only been here a few days and you're already making waves. Good for you, li'l man." 

"We must deserve to receive, and no payment is given without the appropriate reciprocation of labor. Terezi has been working hard as well, although I suspect her reasons aren't so straightforward. In any case, it's a simple fact." He grabs at something near the foot of the bed. "All you have done, on the other hand, is cause trouble for the people here."

And now you really  _do_ feel like an ass.

Slick saves you the embarrassment of a response and groans loudly. "Ya boys are just as bad as the drama goin' on upstairs. Fuck dry land, I'd rather be out in this shitty weather than in here listenin' to ya dance around your issues like little teen girls." He rubs a hand down the side of his face not covered by the patch and huffs.

Dirk scowls. "I don't think there was any  _dancing_ involved. I feel I made my point abundantly clear."

"Jesus Christ." Slick leans forward and to the side just enough to poke his head through the doorway. "What am I, a fuckin' family counselor now? Just tell your damn brother you're glad he's alive instead of makin' shit jabs at the fact that he's a little unstable right now. I ain't well-versed in the medical mechanics of what goin' on in his system—and frankly I don't give a flying fuck about any of that technical shit—but I've seen some real fucked up people turn out just fine even after they've been shot up with whatever poison has those creatures outside runnin' around rasin' hell for us."

"I understand, howev—"

"I wasn't fuckin' finished, kid. You've met that Sollux runt, right?" Dirk keeps on glaring, but he nods. "Skinny as damn light pole and a little bit of a snippy ass who doesn't get out much, but almost anyone here could snap him in half in a second, yeah? Wrong. Took him almost a month to come to his full damn senses after what was left of the team sent to get him dragged his happy ass back to John. We lost a lotta important people for him, and he turned right around and almost killed two of us more than a week after we'd already been takin' care of him. There was just so much shit runnin' through his body—so much happenin' in there—he was all fucked up. So in my very professional opinion, this jerk," he jabs a finger in your direction, "is doin'  _stellar_ , all things considered. He's havin' a conversation with you, walkin' around, sheddin' existential  _tears_ for Christ's sake, when for everythin' that's right and good he shoulda long been six feet under the fuckin' ground."

You can almost hear the mic drop in the silence that follows, but Slick just goes right back to leaning against the wall like he hadn't said anything in the first place. You just kind of stare at him for a second, and when you turn back toward Dirk his expression isn't pissed off anymore. It's just... neutral. And you don't really know how to take that.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very special thanks goes to my fabulous edit and proofreading team [chrisytopher](http://chrisytopher.tumblr.com/), [psuedopassionfruit](http://psuedopassionfruit.tumblr.com/), and [brinkofseizure](http://brinkofseizure.tumblr.com/) for digging through this chapter. You're all wonderful, and I'm very grateful for your help. <3
> 
> And thank _you_ guys for reading! Your support is what keeps me going, and none of this could be possible without your help. I love you all from the bottom of my heart, and wish you all the best as the school semester comes to a close. You'll be in my thoughts!
> 
> As always, feel free to message me with any comments or questions on my blog, [egbertiian](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/), or post something in the [freightstuck](http://tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) or [egbertiian](http://tumblr.com/tagged/egbertiian/) tags! If I don't reblog your post within a day or two, feel free to stop by and give me a nudge. Things don't always show up on the tag page, unfortunately, and I might have missed it. (This happened with the last chapter--I got a notification that there was something new in the tag, but nothing was there!)
> 
> In any case, have a wonderful holiday season and stay warm if you're in an area where the weather is getting chilly. Much love!


	16. So Close, So Far

 

**== > REWIND TWENTY-FOUR HOURS**

**== > BE THE HUGE JERK**

Dirk isn't on your back anymore. He's standing next to Rose—who's sad and afraid all at once—and Slick, who's just silent. They're all just staring at you and Dave, waiting for you do something. Waiting for you to fix everything right on the spot and make it all okay.

They have too much faith in you, you think.

Because it _won't_ be okay, not really. Nothing will, and you'd realized that the moment Dave slumped over onto you, weeping, begging you to explain things that even after six years you still couldn't quite piece together. In that frozen bit of time—that single cathartic second—you'd _understood_.

You'd looked down at him and had seen yourself—seen the things you refused to acknowledge, the mistakes you'd made, the people you'd pushed aside, and the person you were starting to become. You'd understood that however you approached the world, however much emotion you took out of what you did and how you did it, your job wasn't— _isn't_ to watch the people around you crumble and do your best to patch them up after they're all shattered in little tiny pieces. It's to _take care of them_ and make sure they _don't crack in the first place_.

Looking at Dave is like looking into a mirror, because all you can see is who you really are behind the mask you've spent so long carefully building. Someone full of despair, confusion, hopelessness. Full of a kind of physical, palpable desperation with no outlet, no direction. It's him, and it's _you_. So different, yet somehow so much the same.

You tell Rose to take Dirk downstairs to his room, and they quietly go without protest. Slick stays, watching as you don't make any real attempt to calm Dave down. He wheezes and chokes and sobs, and you just hold him. Because what can you tell him that isn't a lie? Nothing. Nothing at all.

(And if you start crying along with him, Slick doesn't say a thing.)

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and you DO NOT have all the answers. In fact, you DON'T HAVE ANY ANSWERS AT ALL. You're just moving forward like everyone else, working with what you're given and still fucking up along the way. You feel, in the back of your mind, that you've come to this conclusion before. That you've already experienced this earth-shattering, life-changing EPIPHANY. But somehow, now, holding a single, damaged soul in your arms on the cold linoleum floor of your home, it seems so much more REAL. You're no more an all-powerful god than you are an unfeeling devil. You're just... _human_ , and in some vain attempt to rectify your insecurities you'd almost become something worse than the monsters outside.

And that terrifies you.

_You_ terrify you.

Eventually, Dave goes limp and quiet, and you pick him up as gently as you can. He doesn't weigh anything, and that surprises you more than it should. How much weight has he lost in the last few weeks? You're supposed to be taking care of him; you should know.

You lay him on his bed and close the door behind you as you leave, asking Slick if he would mind standing in the hall a little bit longer. He shrugs and says, "I don't care. It's warmer in here than it is out there, anyway."

"Thanks. He'll probably wake up before dinner, and I'd like to talk to him. Let me know if you hear anything?" You don't know what you want to say to him, exactly, but by the time you get the chance you'll have something figured out, right? Slick nods, and you don't lock the room because you don't see the point anymore. 

You spend the rest of the day in your own office, trying your best to undo some of the damage you've unintentionally wrought on the newest members of your family.

You reach out to Sollux first—asking him to set up four new phones on the system—then contact Equius. Roxy had told you that Dirk liked to work with his hands, so you pass that information along to he and his cousin with a request to give Dirk some small project while he gets his strength back. You know he's getting restless, too.

There isn't much you can do for Vriska, but you sit and talk with her for a while in the afternoon. She still refuses to leave her room, no matter how much Rose and Terezi have tried to convince her it's safe. You think it will take longer for her to adjust than any of the others—for some people, some fears are rooted so deep they can't see past the surface. She's not the first. You're not worried, per se; only sad.

Gamzee, on the other hand, seems to be doing well. Not great by any means, but alright. Without Tavros to keep an eye on him through the thick throes of withdrawal, you'd moved him to the farthest room on the second floor and left him alone, much like Dave. After Dave attacked Fef, though, you'd started locking that door as well. While Gamzee has his perfectly lucid moments, there were some times when he started to lose himself. You've seen people go through it before—it's not a reflection on the person's character, but on the damage things can do to the human body. He's kept mostly quiet, though, and you don't know whether he just accepted his fate or didn't really understand it in the first place.

When you walk into his room, he looks thin and pale, and he's shaking. You chat with him for a little bit, too, but he's so out of it there's not much to the conversation. He goes on for a while about things he enjoyed doing before the world ended like you're not even in the room, rambling half to himself, and you learn more about him in that hour than you did in all the months leading up to his arrival. He'd been a high school dropout and a drug addict, you'd known that much—but in the time he spent bouncing between Houston homeless shelters and halfway houses he made his living cooking for soup kitchens and the places that gave him refuge. An exchange of work for food, shelter, and a meager paycheck. He liked to bake, he said. He liked to bake a whole motherfucking lot. And when he asks you if he can make things here, you tell him yes, as soon as he gets better.

He goes kind of quiet, then, and after sitting in silence for some time you leave with the promise to check on him again soon. He doesn't respond, and instead just keeps staring at the window.

You ask Rose about Dave last, and she doesn't tell you the answer you really want to hear. Instead, she says to give him some time, and even though it makes sense—he's hurting, most likely due in no small part to you—you wish there was something you could actually _do_. You settle for checking in on him throughout the day with no real plans to stick around if you find him awake, because you still don't know what to say.

He doesn't wake up by the time night falls, so you take over for Slick and send him back to his tent. It certainly isn't your intention to fall asleep, but the darkness and quiet lulls you, pulling perpetual exhaustion right up to the front of your brain. Halfway through an old 2014 _BMC Biology_ journal, you're out like a light.

When finally Dave rouses, hungry and confused, all you can do is make small talk. He doesn't seem angry, but you can tell he's wary of you. And even though you understand _why_ , it still stings.

You can't bring yourself to actually apologize until after the door has closed.

* * *

**[6/10/37]**

" _Fuck_ your job, Tavros. You're _alive_."

You're in his room, trying to get him comfortable in the wheelchair Dirk finished building earlier this afternoon. Horuss is with you, and Rufioh is out in the hallway, overwhelmed by the chaos inside. You don't blame him for leaving. The place is a mess, torn apart as much as possible in the last few minutes by a frustrated, angry young man who's lost faith in himself. It's the physical manifestation of his desperation.

You understand why Tavros is upset—and, honestly, _upset_ is such a mild, glossed-over word to use. He's lost the use of his legs, and aside from the fact that he's lost any chance of a normal future, that's a dangerous thing in today's world. It's not a secret that no one with a physical disability managed to survive those first few months, because the reality is that even the smallest disadvantage can mean death in the wild.

But that's no excuse for the _bullshit_ he's screaming now, because _things are different_. You have a _home_ now, a safe place to live, and even though it's not perfect—two weeks ago proved that much—it's so, so far removed from the way you were living before you came here. And he has a _chance_. A real, honest-to-shit chance.

" _Well what if I don't want to be?"_

That pisses you off, because no matter how much you want him to rise above, you can't _force_ him to do anything. You can't _make_ him want to keep moving forward, you can only help him along the way.

"Then that's your choice, but unless it's because you can't cope with the _world_ and not because you've _given up on yourself_ , I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you keep on living."

And that's it. There's nothing more you can say, so you don't. As you storm through the door, you see Rufioh is still in the hall and you think he might be crying, but you don't stop. You pass Dave, standing outside his own room looking equal parts confused and panicked, but you don't stop. Even Dirk backs off when he sees you on the first floor, on his way to ask or tell you something, and you _don't stop_. You just push ahead, right out of the building and into the pouring rain with no real destination in mind. 

Almost immediately, you're walking blind.

The downpour is so heavy that your glasses are streaked in seconds, and you're soaked right down to your underwear. It's like walking right under a waterfall or getting into the shower with your clothes on, and by the time you've stomped to the muddy hill in the middle of camp you're starting to regret your decision. You couldn't stay in the Infirmary any longer—you would have said and done things you know you'd regret—but you wish you'd grabbed a jacket on your way out.

The ground is slick and marshy, grass torn up by the water rushing downhill and what looks like the deep footprints of several people, and as thunder rumbles overhead it occurs to you that you haven't seen a storm this bad in a while. The sheer volume of it all is impressive.

You just sort of stand there for a while, in the middle of camp, awed by the power of creation and looking down over everything. You can't see very much or very far, only partial silhouettes of the larger buildings. That's it, though—no people, no real movement. Just vague, hulking shadows to the west. You're not sure if the grounds are really deserted or you just can't tell, but some part of you hopes no one is out in this weather. You wonder if the people on patrol are alright, and hope the trees are shielding them from the worst of it.

Suddenly, you hear the sound of muffled, panicked shouts in the distance behind you—to the east, toward the camp under Karkat's watch—but when you turn around all you can see is rain. Their tents are too small, too close to the ground to make out through the tempest and your half-useless glasses. You start slogging your way through the mud as fast as you can, slipping more than running down the hill.

The closer you get, the louder the yells become, until you can hear them clearly over the roar of the storm. It takes you longer than you'd like to reach the fence surrounding the Cured camp, but the minute you do you realize something is very, very wrong.

In the beginning, when you'd first settled here, it had been unanimously decided by the Executive Committee that the Cured camp be built as far to the edge on the main grounds as possible. The movement had been made for everyone's sake. In semi-isolation—surrounded on two sides by hills, two by forest—noise from the larger buildings wouldn't reach them during the day, and for those uninfected who were still wary of them there was a sort of out of sight, out of mind mentality. But there are risks to living where they do—threats in some ways far worse than monsters.

Threats like nature.

"—se the rocks from the fire pit for now!" Someone shouts, and though you think it might be Karkat, you're not really sure. "Eridan—take a group to the ruins and bring back more! It's not going to last much longer, and— _fuck!_ " Suddenly, there's the sound of wood creaking, groaning, giving up and a chorus of shrieks and yells rises up through the downpour. " _Terezi, get down!_ "

You take off running.

You don't even bother looking for the gate and instead just leap over the fence, weaving through the tents as fast as you can until you see the crowd of people gathered on the north side of the camp. Here, the wooden barrier becomes a waist-high barricade of stones, built to shield homes from mudslides down the Markeryard hill. Or at least, that was the intention. Now, sections of the low wall are completely decimated as the torrential downpour forces more water, grass, and debris than it can handle. A trail of frantic men and women are working hard and fast to rebuild what they can, but from what you can tell there just isn't enough material to keep up. One tent has already collapsed, supports uprooted by a wave of muck.

Karkat is standing by the wreckage, helping Terezi up from the ground. You can't tell if she's hurt or not.

Suddenly, the rough, grating screech of stone grinding together rises up over the din, and as you watch, a second section of the blockade starts to fall apart.

Without thinking, you bolt toward it—

—and throw your back to the stones, pushing against the slick ground for some hint of traction. You can feel the sharp edges digging through your shirt, tearing your skin, but if another part of the wall crumbles there will be no saving the rest. Immediately, three more people join you, using their bodies to stop what they can.

"John!" Karkat shouts, rushing over with TZ in tow. Thankfully, she seems alright.

"Get Equius down here with backup!" you yell back, trying to concentrate on keeping your feet from slipping out from under you. "Where's Nep?"

"She went with Eridan. And we tried! We can't use our phones—there's too much rain and the screens won't—"

"Then send someone! He's probably in his tent, and even if he's not round up as many people as you ca—" the man on your right lets out a panicked screech and skids down in the mud, bashing his head against the wall before he hits the ground. " _Shit!_ " You widen your stance, pressing up against the chunk he'd been holding, and two people break from the line passing rocks from the center of camp to drag him away. " _Just get someone and go!_ "

Karkat starts barking orders and a few more Cured bolt toward the edge of camp, disappearing into the downpour. As soon as they're gone, he pushes up next to you, small but powerful. "We can't keep this up much longer!"

"We can and we _will_ ," you hiss out through gritted teeth, but the sound is lost to the storm. " _We can and we will!_ "

"I really fucking hope you're right!"

Terezi is gone, now, and you don't know where she went because you've been too busy trying to keep your balance. Several tense eternities pass before someone comes rushing up to your human blockade and shouts, "That's it! There isn't anything left down at the pit, we don't have any more—"

Karkat cuts him off. "Take everyone and start moving shit from the ruins, then! Don't stop!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Don't fucking call me that!" Your friend yells back, but the man is already gone.

You can't help but laugh a little, because you can't imagine Karkat giving off the sort of vibe that would warrant the title, and he just glares at you through the rain. He's completely soaked, just like the rest of you, black hair plastered down on his face and clothes sticking to his dark skin. If it weren't for the bright yellow eyes staring daggers in your direction, you think he might look like a shadow. Small, slight, and easily lost in the night.

But he's fierce—he's _always_ been fierce. And the way his sharp, white teeth are curled up in a grimace—determined but hurting—tell you his fire won't go out any time soon.

You decide yeah, maybe you can see it. _Sir_. You snort again.

"Can it, asshole!" Karkat shouts, but that only makes you grin wider.

The wind starts to pick up, whipping violently from the north and pressing the current of destruction down harder on the four of you from behind. Something crashes in the distance, and Karkat curses. Another home lost.

Out of the rain, Eridan and a trail of people carrying large rocks and stacks of old bricks start to emerge, and immediately they set to work reinforcing the part of the wall that has already collapsed. Nepeta bolts over to the two of you as soon as she's deposited her load and pecks Karkat on the lips—quick and desperate and full of worry—without a word, then disappears back the way she'd come. It's both a promise and a plea, you think. A promise to come back safe, and a plea for him to stay that way.

(You wonder, deep in the back of your mind, if you'll ever get the chance to have that. Your family needs you—loves you—but there's a kind of disconnect. A separation, because you all have your own jobs to do and your own lives to live. It's different. But the world is so small now, and your responsibilities so great, you don't know if there's room in your heart and your head to let someone in more than you already do. Which isn't much, really.

You're alone at the top of the pile, you realize. There's an equality needed to _feel_ like that—to feel like that about someone—and everyone here has you up on some shitty pedestal. And from it, you can't help but look down on them all. Not in a bad way, but in the kind of way that keeps you separated. The kind of way that that makes the difference between _leader_ and _civilian_ too obvious for you to see the people you're meant to take care of as anything more or less than that— _people to take care of_. The problem stems from you just as much as it does everyone else. You've never wanted something different, never _needed_ something different. But maybe someday you will, and when that day comes, you know there won't be anyone waiting.

It's not worth changing who you are for a lost cause, anyway.)

At least an hour passes, the barrier rises stronger as more stones are built up on and around it, and the person holding the wall on your left switches with someone when her legs start to give out. The storm doesn't let up, and you're not sure how much longer you and the other can keep the torrent at bay. You're not shaking, not cold, but your fingers and toes have gone numb.

"Just a little bit longer!" you shout, but you're not sure if it's some kind of shitty motivational cry for everyone else or just you. A scattered chorus of incoherent yells strike up from every direction, though, so at least it does something.  

And then suddenly, like a gift from heaven, a flood of people break through the gale and descend from the western hill with Jake and Equius at the lead. There are hundreds, you think—most of the compound as a whole—a majority of which are carrying wood and stones and short, ancient metal beams from the old buildings no longer in use. Twelve people beeline for the four of you still pressed up against the collapsing rocks, and it's like a weight is lifted from shoulders. You see Karkat kind of sag, and without asking or telling, you shove him forward, away from the wall. Three people take his place. He scowls at you, but it's wet and tired and grateful.

He turns, then, and shouts to a group of his own who have frozen in place watching the onslaught of help. "Focus on the tents! We don't know how many have collapsed, and we need to keep more from falling! Salvage what you can! You—" he points to a man on his knees wrapping bandages around someone's leg. "Start moving the injured out of here. Get some others together to help."

After that, you lose sight of him in the fray, but you know he'll be alright.

Someone calls your name, then, and soon Jake is standing in front of you with a wide plank hefted up on his shoulder. "There isn't much we can do whilst the rain coming down, but we'll reinforce what we can and Equius has plans to reevaluate the wall as a whole when it's over."

You nod, shifting your weight against the stones to your back. "It's been taking hell for three years—we knew it wasn't going to last forever. Do you what you can for now."

"We intend to. It might be best if you returned to the Infirmary for the time being, though. Kankri, Rose and Jane are there now, but there might be more people headed their way than they can handle alone."

"They'll be fine for now, I can't leave ye—"

A high-pitched scream breaks through the roaring storm, followed by the distinct sounds of wood breaking. Your first instinct is to run toward the noise, but you can't. You're stuck with holding back the bricks and water and—

"We've got things under control here," Jake says. "If you won't go back, at least do what you think you ought to."

You thank him and make a break for it, glancing back long enough to see the people you'd been with move, filling the spot you'd left. There's a small crowd already heading toward what you'd heard, and you follow them until you see the damage. The extensive, borderline-catastrophic damage.

Tents on the east side of camp back up to the forest, and the water must have washed away more dirt than anyone could have thought because from what you can tell, that—in combination with the overwhelming winds—has lead to the collapse of at least two enormous trees directly on top of the homes nearby. There's a small group of people around one, trying to lift it off the destroyed hut underneath, but they only manage to move it a few feet before there's a deafening creak-groan-crack and—

" _Get out of the way!_ " You yell, running, running, running—

—but it's too late. Another ancient pine starts falling, and the four or five people barely scatter in time as it goes down too close to where they'd been standing. Suddenly, a young woman is grabbing at your shirt, frantically pulling you toward the wreckage. "There's someone under there!" She screams, and eyes wide and panicked. "She went to get my photo albums—I told her not to go—oh God, oh my God—she's still in there!" Her voice breaks until you can't understand what she's saying anymore. _Fuck_. You grab someone nearby and pry the woman's fingers from your clothes a little too roughly, handing her off to him.

"Stay back and evacuate the area!" you yell toward the crowd. "We don't know when the next one is going to fall!"

And then you do something that's probably very, _very_ stupid.

* * *

 

The two trees are pinning the top of the tent down hard, but you manage to pull it up enough to get underneath. There's a sort of eye-of-the-storm feel once you're there, because the noise outside muffled and suddenly you're not being pounded with the wind and rain. The fur-and-canvas roof is still held up halfway by broken supports, most of which are sticking out and ready to stab you with their sharp, splintered ends if you take one wrong step. It's dark as hell, and as much as you want to run in and out you know you can't because the floor is littered with smashed furniture, ruined clothes, and the wrecked remnants of a comfortable life lost in an instant.

"Hello?" you call, and when there's no immediate answer you start to worry that you'll be carrying out a corpse. "Is anyone still in here?"

After a moment, a small, familiar voice to your left calls back. "Help! John—John, is that you?"

You move toward it carefully, picking your way across the havoc. "I'm here! Where are you?"

"I'm trapped under the shelves. You shouldn't be here, it's too dangerous!" She shouts, and in the distance you hear the roar of the wind as whips through the trees. There's a _snap!_ and something hits the caved-in roof with a _thud_ not quite powerful enough to bring it down, but enough to get you moving faster.

"Well, I'm not going to leave you here!" You yell, and suddenly the voice clicks in your head. Fef. It's _Fef_. "Keep talking!"

And she does. Her voice is weak, but she keeps up a once-sided conversation as you figure out where she is and then get to work frantically pulling at the broken wood and glass pinning her to the ground. You realize a moment too late that the collapsed shelving is the only thing keeping the fallen tree above from fully crashing down, though, and when the whole thing shifts you hear her scream. " _John! John, please!_ "

"Hold on, Fef. I'm going to—I can see you, okay? I can see you. Just stay still." In truth, you can only make out part of her, but from what you can tell she's curled up as small as humanly possible around something in her arms. She's shaking, crying, and you do your best to keep her engaged because if she's really, really hurt you don't want her to pass out. That will make freeing her even more difficult than it already is.

Eventually, you clear out enough loose material to reach out and grab her shoulders. "I'm sorry, John. You shouldn't be here, you could get hurt and it would be my fault," she says, but you shake your head.

"I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Are you pinned down anywhere, or can I just pull you out?"

"I'm not—I'm just—I got lucky. The shelves are resting on me, though. Once I'm gone it's all going to fall."

You sigh, relieved that she isn't severely injured. "That's good. Awesome. Okay, we're going to have to do this quick so you're not crushed. On three—ready?" She nods, but you think maybe you should have phrased it better because she looks so petrified you don't know if she'll move in time. You maneuver around to grip under her arms and she curls up even smaller, like a little ball of black hair and fear. "One, two, thr—"

Suddenly, the hairs on your arms the back of your neck prick up, and something cracks outside, deafening and high pitched and terrifying, and then the whole structure is shaking. Behind you, you hear the sound of things breaking, tumbling, and you know you need to get out of here _now_. In one motion, you yank Feferi out from under the rubble (ignoring the fire that burns in your right wrist when you do) and scoop her up into your arms, _sprinting_ toward the exit. You don't pause when you trip—don't pause when something sharp sears through your side—don't pause when Fef shrieks and grips the front of your shirt. You keep moving until you've shoved your way through the canvas and into the rain just as thunder rolls too-close overhead, muffling everything.

There's an unnatural crackling, creaking, roaring from the forest, and seconds after you dive into the mud another tree crashes down—this one black and burned and smoking.

You don't have time to process the fact that you'd almost been killed, because suddenly Eridan is in front of you freaking the _fuck_ out. "Here, take her to the Infirmary—go north, around the hill," you shout without listening to a word he's saying, and as soon as Fef is in his arms he takes off.

There's a small scattering of people around—Karkat, Jake, and a few others—and before you can tell them to get back another bolt of lightning flashes overhead. It's up in the clouds, but the _immediate_ response of thunder is enough to get everyone moving. Your skin is prickling, like you've been rubbing a balloon all over your body, and all you want to do it _run away_.

"We need to evacuate _now_ ," you shout, booking it back toward the barricade. By now, most of the reinforcement work is finished, and it doesn't look like it'll collapse again for the time being. "Get everyone inside the main buildings."

"The only way there is through an open field, it's too fucking dangerous!" Karkat yells back, and you know he can feel it too.

You shake your head, flicking water in your eyes. "We can't be out here any longer than we have to, and we've got trees on one side and a metal fence to the south. Both of those are shit to be around if it touches down again, but we have to pick one. Through the forest is our best bet."

Karkat hesitates, but Jake nods and waves Nep and Equius over through the crowd. "It seems as good a plan as any," he says. "We'll go in groups, staying as far away from the edge as possible."

"Right. Round up as many people as you can. Head for the Library; it's closer to the treeline than the Cabinet even though you'll pass that first," you reply. "We need to do this fast."

It's risky, but it's all you can do because staying here isn't an option. Equius takes the first clump of refugees and vanishes into the woods while the rest of you crouch as close as possible to the stone wall. There are so many people, though, you end up with two or three rows along the entire length, huddled together against the storm. For the first time since you left the Infirmary, you feel cold.

* * *

By the time you make it back to the Infirmary, you're soaked completely through. You and a few others are the last group to leave the Cured camp, and you make sure they're safely in the Library before you bolt for your own building's door. There's a crowd of injured huddled in the first floor hallway, and when you're finally inside you see Kankri visibly sag with what's probably relief and start making his way toward you. "John! Thank God. We were informed of what you did and weren't sure if you were going to make it ba—Good Lord!" He freezes, and all you can do is blink at him through glasses blurred by rain.

"What?"

"Are you—Here, come sit down. Rose!" He grabs you by the forearm and begins dragging you to your room, pushing past the wide, worried eyes of everyone else still waiting for care. A few thank you for your help as you pass, and you just nod numbly.

The moment Kankri forces you to sit on the lab table in the center of your office, Rose glides through the doorway and says, "Oh, John," in a kind of sad, concerned tone that doesn't make sense.

"Seriously, I'm fine! There are people out there who need—"

"Hold still! You'll just make it worse!" Kankri says, and it's so stern you stop moving for a moment. "At least take your shirt off so we can see."

"What do you..." you look down, then, and just sort of halt. Because oh, _oh_ you're in pain. Oh shit. Oh shit _you're in so much pain_. And your head is kind of spinning, what the hell?

Your shirt is almost completely dyed on the left side, blood blossoming out from a tear in the fabric as wide as your hand that wraps all the way from your navel to the middle of your back. And the split in your skin is just as impressive, if not more so. You can't tell how deep it is, but it's still nowhere near clotting. (All you can think of is Feferi, though. It had to have happened when you got her out of the tent. Was she alright? Had she gotten hurt, too?)

Rose is behind you, now, with a pair of scissors in her hands, cutting through the cloth. You're about to protest, but she lets out this quiet kind of gasp and—

"Kankri, don't let Jane in. Close the door," she says, and he glances briefly over your shoulder before doing what he's told without a word.

" _What?_ I'm fine, it's not that bad. Once the bleeding stops—"

" _Stop moving_ ," Rose hisses, and suddenly there's something cold and _stinging_ on your back and _holy shit that hurts that hurts that hurts_. "It looks like you've been rubbing against an apple peeler, we'll need to suture these closed. And the wound on your side—Where do you keep the stitching supplies?"

You pause for a moment, thinking, and then there's a kind of raw realization that hits the bottom of your gut like ice. "I don't have any more thread—I used the last of it on Dave, remember? That's partly why we're planning the next run."

Rose stiffens, and you hear Kankri hiss air out through his teeth as he presses a towel to the wound on your side. (You can't help it—you give a small shout because _fuck_ that hurts and he gave you _no warning_. Rude.) "We... Have to close at least that one somehow. There's no way it'll heal on its own, and clearly you have no idea how much blood you've lost. When whatever adrenaline is left in your system wears off, you could be facing serious consequences."

You don't know what to say.

In the tense silence that follows, Rose works to clean the (apparently extensive) wounds on your back, wrapping scraps of cloth around your torso to keep them covered. Outside, you can hear people rushing around, and a strange high-pitched squeaking moves up and down the hall every so often. You want more than anything to be out there, helping, because that's your _job_ , but the harder Kankri presses on your side the dizzier you start to feel.

Then you come to the kind of grim realization that if you can't help yourself, you're of absolutely no use to anyone else. And if you bleed out in your own damn room _in your own damn Infirmary_ , you don't deserve to, anyway.

And that's bullshit.

"Rose," you say quietly, and your voice sounds so hard and rough you almost don't recognize it. "Up in one of the top cabinets there should be a set of straps—the ones I used to restrain Dave. I need you to get those for me." She looks at you, confused, but you must be wearing a pretty serious expression because she does what you ask without questing it. "Kankri, up in the surgical room there's a staple gun on one of the shelves. Like, the white medical kind. You know what I'm talking about, right? Bring that down."

He hesitates, then, and you hear Rose stop, too. "John, no," she says, moving back into your field of vision. "We have no localized painkillers—no painkillers at all, if you don't count Jade's unregulated, homegrown opiate brews. There's no way—"

"First of all, _I_ regulate them, so they're totally legal. Second—what are my other options?" you're already gritting your teeth because even though you think you're prepared for what you're about to do, you're well aware that it'll be so, _so_ much worse than you imagine. That's why you never use it—or at least why you haven't in a long, long time.

Kankri leaves, closing the door behind him.

"If you pass out, we have no idea when you'll wake up again. We'll have no way of knowing just how bad your injuries are because you _won't be awake to tell us_ , do you understand?" she bites out, pulling the last bandage around your torso tighter than necessary.

"I'll just have to stay conscious, then, I guess."

"There has to be another way."

"If you can think of one, please let me know. Because trust me—I do _not_ want to do this."

Rose doesn't respond, and that's as good an answer as any. You can practically hear her anger, her frustration as she rummages around through your room, looking for what you'd asked. Slamming things around, banging doors and drawers closed—it's palpable. Just as Kankri reenters carrying a small bag, she hands you the tightly-bound straps with so much force you almost drop them.

You ask her to lock the door, and she does. Then you put two of the straps between your teeth and bite down _hard_ , blow one last breath out through your nose, and pinch the wound closed.

When you pull the trigger, you think your shouts might be loud enough to shake the building's foundation.

(Because the pain is _blinding, searing, crippling—FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!_ Your vision blurs, everything falls out of focus and the world starts to go black around the edges. Through the red-hot hellfire— _God, it burns! It burns so much!_ —you can feel the cold metal slicing through flesh and muscle, pulling your skin together too tight, too quick, but you keep going. Once you've started, you can't stop, because if you do you _won't finish_. And that's so much worse than not doing it at all.)

* * *

You scream and scream and scream through the self-imposed bit, and when you drop the staple gun you don't even hear it clatter to the floor. You're shaking, your face is wet, and you're covered in blood halfway up your forearms. 

Everything seems so far away when you glance up and see Rose and Kankri, both white as a sheet, standing by the door. In the distance, there's a kind of frantic banging, and all you can think is _I have a DO NOT DISTURB sign for a reason_.

It's probably not the most reasonable thing to be worried about, and the sheer ridiculousness of it makes you snort a laugh. Then another. And before you know it you're giggling like a drunk sixteen-year-old at his first party. (And then you half-leap-half-fall off your table because _oh fuck_ , suddenly you're heaving and you really don't want that shit anywhere near you.)

Rose rushes over before you can say anything and helps you to your chair, gently steering you around the mess of stomach acid and bile pooling on your floor. The pounding on your door doesn't stop, and instead has been joined by a chorus of frantic yells. The three of you do your best to ignore it, though, and as you watch Kankri starts soaking up your vomit with a towel from somewhere in the room.

Once you're sitting, Rose crouches down in front of you. "Are you alright?" she asks quietly, and you want to roll your eyes but you think that might make the room spin more than it already is.

"Perfect. Just give me a minute and some bandages. I'm going into shock, so I should be good as new pretty soon."

Her eyebrows scrunch up. "That's... not a good thing."

But you wave her off. "In this situation, it is. I have a job to do, so. Bandages. And water, please."

She sighs but stands and makes her way over to the sink. You hear it running, and after a moment there's a mug in your hand—the same mug you'd had last night in Dave's room, you think—filled from the tap. As carefully as you can (your hands are still shaking a little, and that needs to stop) you take a few sips, willing your body to _be still_. Against your protests (you can do it! You're fine, really!) Rose begins cleaning you up and wrapping gauze around your midsection, and by the time she's finished you think you might be able to do a pretty fantastic mummy impression.

You feel kind of dead, like nothing is totally real, but that's better than the alternative.

Eventually, you're on your feet again, and as the two of them watch you scrub your hands clean and rummage around in the pile of probably-clean-but-you're-really-not-sure-although-at-this-point-it-doesn't-matter clothes near your mattress for a shirt. Rose has to help you put it on. Your pants are caked with drying blood on the left side, but you decide changing those isn't worth the trouble.

Before you make your way to the door, you walk around your room a few times to make sure you've got the whole balance thing down right, and mentally prepare yourself for whatever is on the other side.

Jane is the first person you see.

She's got her full body weight leaning up against the door, and almost falls right into you when you open it. She looks frantic, and her eyes are red like she's been crying. "John! Oh my God, are you alright? What happened? We heard—"

"I'm fine, don't worry," you say, but when she goes in for a hug you have to step back because that would be _really bad_. (The expression on her face is enough to break your heart.) The hall is still full of people, most of which have gone quiet, and you can see Dirk standing in his doorway watching you. "I'm sorry I stole Kankri and Rose."

Jane just shakes her head. "Are you sure you're okay? It sounded like..." she trails off, glancing around you into the room. You hope there isn't too much blood left on everything.

"Seriously, it's all good." You put your hands on her shoulders and maneuver her around, back toward the hallway. "Does everyone who needs a bed have one? What about basic first aid?" You turn to address the small crowd. "I'm sorry for the wait, guys. You'll all get help as soon as possible. Jane will be taking anyone with shallow skin abrasions in the farthest room down the hall, and Kankri will help anyone with internal limb injuries—breaks, sprains, that kind of thing—in 107. Everyone else, sit tight. I'll be with you as fast as I can." You give your sister a light push as people start to stand and shuffle around, and then you turn back to Rose and say quietly, "Can you move Vriska upstairs?" She nods.

Suddenly, you hear the last person you expect call your name.

"Tav?" you say, and as soon as the word is out of your mouth you realize he's sitting there, tall in his chair, looking concerned and tense and tired.

"W-Who else?" he replies, laughing a little, and you can't help but think that there's no way this is the same boy from earlier—the same one who'd shouted, screamed that he wanted to die. The two of you talk like nothing happened earlier, as though it's just any other day on the job, and when you ask _him_ how _he's_ doing, he just rolls his eyes and looks at you like you're crazy, parroting the same question back. Point made.

You spend most of the evening tending to everyone, waiting for the storm outside to die down. It's slow-going work, and it seems like there's not a single person in the building who isn't exhausted, which you understand. You're tired, too. And as the hours pass, the pain in your body starts to creep up toward the front of your mind, slowly, viciously, like an animal stalking you from the edge of the woods. You have no idea when you'll come to your senses, and all you can do is work right up until the moment you drop.

Waiting is hell.

Thankfully, no one has more than a few superficial injuries, so there's no need for the kind of treatment you'd put yourself through. You have a few cases of hypothermia and three twisted ankles, but nothing serious. By the time you realize you haven't heard thunder in a while, almost everyone has been taken care of, and when dinner rolls around you start sending those home who still have a place to go. The Cured camp is too dangerous to return to with the rain still falling, so you fill as many empty rooms as you can in the Infirmary and message the Gen Care team as a whole to set up temporary rooms in the Administration Building. The message is passed along to Sollux, as well, and he starts releasing a stream of refugees from the Library to find shelter elsewhere if they'd like.

Only when Karkat contacts you privately, concerned, do you realize you haven't been keeping track of the people moving through the Infirmary. Although there was nothing severe on the living, you don't know if anyone was left behind in the camp, potentially trapped in the collapsed tents. You'd been so concerned with getting everyone out of there before lightening killed someone, you hadn't thought about searching for anyone unable to escape.

Your first instinct is to go back, but Kankri talks you out of it before you get the chance to do anything, so the long, arduous process of trying to take some kind of roll via Pesterchum begins. A fair amount of Cured left their phones in the wreckage, so a considerable helping of stress and panic goes into tracking everyone down. But with so many people so close together, huddled in various groups on one side of the compound, any stragglers are eventually found. You spend most of the early evening with Karkat, holed up in your room with lists of names, checking people off as you get confirmation that each one is alive and safe.

Even Jade, who you hadn't thought to worry about until you don't hear from her for at least an hour, responds. She'd been up by the river when the storm started, and had been battling the flooding banks—trying to protect the Greenhouse—while you were fighting against your own wall of water. Jane and Cronus come and go with food, relieved to hear that you haven't lost anyone.

And then, suddenly, there's only one name left unmarked.

Roxy.

* * *

Rose returns to the Infirmary as soon as you message her asking where her daughter is, and Jane follows in, prompted by the same question. You contact Jake, then Jade, and ask Feferi in person because she's still in the building. Eventually, your whole family—plus Rose and Karkat—is sitting in your room, tense and silent.

Your sister is the first to speak up. "I... haven't seen her since Monday evening. When we left after dinner, she said she had something to do."

"She hasn't come by Dirk's room since the day before yesterday, either," Jake adds quietly.

"What about yesterday?" you ask, and now you're worried, too.

"She's prone to spend nights with either Jane or Sollux without notifying me," Rose says, "so I didn't think there was cause for alarm when she didn't come back to our room both evenings."

You rub the bridge of your nose under your glasses, suddenly nauseas. "He hasn't seen her either, and she's not online," you say, and Rose's hand goes to cover her mouth. She looks like she's going to be sick.

"Panicking won't do a single fucking thing," Karkat says, but he looks scared. All you can do is shake your head, trying to keep the room level to some degree.

"If she's been gone for at least a day, we know she probably wasn't caught in the storm. Which means she's probably somewhere in one of the buildings." You're sitting in your desk chair, hoping you look stronger than you feel, but there's an air of tension you can almost taste.

"I can't believe I didn't realize she was missing. I can't—Oh, God, I'm a terrible mother," Rose chokes out, already heading toward the door. "I'll check the dorms." You nod, but she doesn't see because she's already gone.

"Jake," you turn to your cousin, "look through the tents and figure out if anyone has seen her. Karkat, do the same for your camp—double check if anyone here or in temp lodging has seen her." They nod solemnly and leave, both not quite running but not quite walking, either. "Jade, see if she wandered off into the woods. Grab Nepeta, too, and tell everyone still on patrol what's going on. I don't want to start an uproar or anything, so make sure they keep this quiet, but it's big out there and we're going to need all the eyes we can get. If she's left the grounds, this could get really bad, really fast, especially with the weather. I don't want to think she's out there, but we need to cover all the ground we can. Jane, you look through the Admin Building and down into the parking lot. We need to hit all our bases, and we already know she's not in the Cafeteria or here."

Jade bolts, too, but your sister hesitates. "How did I—I didn't even think—"

You shake your head and put your hand in her hair, ruffling it like you always do, like you've always done. "Don't worry, we'll find her," you say. "She couldn't have gone far." And your words must sound reassuring, because she looks at you and smiles a little. It's thin and strained and scared, but it's something.

"What about you?" she says softly, worried.

"I'll be fine, just focus on looking for Rox," you reply, and she wraps her arms around your neck in a tight hug that's so quick you don't even have time to blink before she's gone. You let out a hiss as soon as she's out of the room, and sag farther down into your chair. You're alone, now, so you can put your head in your hands and fight a losing battle with the lump welling up in your throat in peace. You want to cry for Roxy, for the people who lost their homes today, and for yourself—but you _can't_ , because you don't have time.

A moment of quiet passes, and then you're heading out into the rain, too.

The first place you go is the Library, where Sollux is already waiting inside the door.

"I haven't gone up to the thecond floor yet, but she's not on the firtht. I even checked back in the therver room. No one thtill here hath theen her, either."

Without saying a word, you head for the stairs and he trails behind, splitting off in the opposite direction when you enter the cavernous den. Unlike the first floor of the building—a maze of offices and what might have at one time been quiet study areas—the second story is one large room filled with a maze of bookshelves and racks. You don't use it for much, so the whole place is covered in a thin layer of dust and spider webs, and only half the lights work. Although you'd moved a lot of the more entertaining material to the Admin Building for recreational purposes (when it isn't used as the overflow dorms in the winter, the building functions like a kind of rec center where people can go to pass the time), there are still stacks and stacks of thick volumes, old and new, making impossible to see farther than a single row.

You call out Roxy's name as you weave through, and eventually Sollux starts yelling, too—but with the two of you making so much noise, you think it would be almost impossible to hear her if she said something back. Eventually, you end up back at the entrance just as Sollux loops back from the other side of the room. "Fuck," you say, and he nods. "You keep looking—if she hasn't eaten since the last time someone anyone saw her, she might've passed out. I've going to over to the Cabinet."

"Good luck," he replies, tense and frowning, and you hope you don't need it.

Back outside, an unexpected roll of thunder rumbles overhead, far away enough not to feel threatening, and you try not to think about how ominous it sounds.

Like the library, the Cabinet is almost dead silent. You start shouting for Roxy the moment you enter, and don't stop even as you scour every room you come across. The place is a mess, you realize—boxes and piles of clothes clog up their designated storage areas; the ammo room, though originally somewhat organized thanks to Jade, has fallen into disarray in the time she's been gone on missions and hiding out by the Greenhouse; you trip over a plastic bin of blank paper in the office supply room and almost land face-first on the concrete floor, and that only serves to make you panic even more. What if Roxy had been looking for something on a higher shelf and fallen? What if she'd done exactly what you just had, only she'd hit her head?

You try not to think about it.

The armory, the biggest room with vaulted ceilings that span both floors of the building, is dead silent, and as you dart through you feel like you're about to start hyperventilating. (But you can't—you have to stay calm. Because of everyone in camp, you have to be the one to think clearly, think rationally when everything starts to fall apart. Your body feels like it's on fire.)

By the time you make it up to the second floor where food and the rest of the camp's basic essentials are stored, your already-compromised voice is hoarse. No one has messaged you yet, and all you can do is hope that no news is good news.

She isn't with the dwindling shelves of canned goods or among the hanging rows of dried meat and vegetables. She isn't with the hand-preserved fruits and herbs, in the makeshift walk-in freezer filled with freshly-killed animals and frozen homemade juices, or in the storage room filled with jugs of fresh water kept in case of emergencies. She isn't in the room of plastic-wrapped breads or the one with spare kitchen and dining utensils or the one with—

You burst into the room you should have thought to check first but you _didn't_ because you thought— _because you thought—_

(But you were naive, you realize as you stop dead in your tracks. You're supposed to be a doctor, God damn it, and you should have realized that some things you never, _never_ leave behind, no matter how much you want to. No matter how much you _need_ to.)

Because there, sprawled out on her back between the sporadically-filled racks of old wine bottles and cider jugs and liquor glasses and moonshine tubs, is Roxy. She's staring up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes and a stupid, infuriating grin on her face, and you can't decide whether or not you want to shout at her or break down in tears. Because she's _okay_ —not _fine_ , but _okay_. Around her, there are three empty containers, and she has one half-empty in her hand. The room smells disgusting.

It takes her a moment to notice you frozen in the doorway, but when she finally realizes there's someone else in the room with her she picks her head up and smiles wider. "' _S_ up," she slurs, giggling, drawing out the _s_ like a drunk snake, and then she erupts into full-bellied laughter. "'Sup, 'sup, 'sup, cup, pup, yup, cup, _fuck_ —I already s(ss)aid that wum—one—didn't I? Did. I. Not?" and she just keeps laughing and laughing and laughing, sloshing around the bottle she's got a loose grip on as she moves.

"Roxy," you bite out, and it sounds stern and scratchy.

Her chuckles die down a little bit and she looks at you again, but she doesn't stop completely. "I f(ff)ucked up, didn't I? The hunky leader's(ss) gonna get all pissy wip—with—me, 'cause I fucked up." And then, suddenly, she's sobbing. There's still a big, ear-splitting smile on her face, but messy tears are streaming down her cheeks and she's wheezing out every word between hiccupping wails. "I c-couldn't do it. I tried s(ss)o hard, Johnny. I tried _s-so hard_ , but I c-couldn't f-fuckin' do it." She tosses the bottle in her hand in your general direction, but you don't know whether her heart's just not in it or she's so drunk she doesn't have the strength, because it just hits the ground a foot past her feet and rolls without breaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm s—" she mumbles, until her words devolve into incoherent wails and she curls up into a ball on the floor.

When you and what was left of your group had made it to the University, Roxy was eleven. It had taken a few months to settle in, begin seriously stockpiling food, restore power to the buildings you would need that had lost it, and make yourselves at home here; and all the while the little girl had been eager to help and eager to learn. She and her mother had welcomed you with open arms, and they'd both done everything they could, whatever you needed and far more.

The night Jade, Nepeta, and their team had come back from their first successful supply run, you'd thrown a party. You were a smaller crowd then, but it had been lively. Meats and vegetables were abundant, music played, people danced, and it lasted well into the night. And among the spoils of war poured out to the masses, you'd enjoyed something none of you had the luxury tasting for a long, long time: alcohol. Here, in the safety of your new home, you'd been able to drink without fear for the first time in years, and everyone—even the little girl still so far from her teen years—had partaken in a mix of old vodka and rum brought back by your cousin and hooch distilled in secret by some of the less responsible members of your community.

That had begun a downward spiral no one could have predicted, but, somehow, everyone should have seen coming.

Because this _child_ , raised in the relative safety of this place, didn't _know_ just how dangerous it could be. And for all her smarts—her _genius_ —she didn't understand.

Trips to the back rooms of then-still-empty buildings with a stolen bottle turned to stumbling around the grounds, then the forest, at all hours of day and night. You'd all been so busy trying to put something like a stable little world back together that you hadn't noticed something was _wrong_ until it was too late—until she screamed and cried when you kept eyes on her at all times, raged when she couldn't get her hands on what her body thought she needed, and pounded her tiny fists against locked doors. The night Rose had found her collapsed in a pool of her own vomit, an empty thing of ancient, burning mouthwash in her hand, was the night you'd dedicated everything you had to getting her out of the cage she'd locked herself inside.

It had taken weeks and months of careful monitoring, of hellish detox because you didn't have the resources to make it easy, but by the time she turned thirteen she was back to the bouncing around like the free bird you'd first met.

But as stupid and cheesy and repetitive as it sounds, addiction doesn't just _go away_. And you think, looking at her now, that you might've forgotten that. (Or you'd pushed it to the back of your mind because you wanted to forget, you wanted to believe that from then on she would be _okay_. But that was a lie—even in this new, despair-filled world, Roxy could never live a normal life.)

This failure isn't hers, not really—it's _yours_.

Without a word, you gather her up in your arms, ignoring how much it _fucking hurts_ , and she clings to your damp shirt like the child it's so easy to forget she is. Against your wide frame and in your large arms, she seems so small, so fragile, and you have to bury your face in her matted, reeking hair to keep yourself from breaking. "What happened, Rox? You were doing so well," you mumble, but all that does is make her cry harder.

"They were _e-everywhere_. There were s-s-so many, _so many_. I've never s(ss)-seen so many before. I thought y-you were gonna die. I thought Mom was—was gonna die. There were so m-many, John, and n-now they won't leave me alone," she wails, and even your shirt can't muffle how terrified she sounds. She's shaking, now, and you're not sure whether it's because her body is exhausted or because of the tears or because she's just that scared. "I j-just wanted them to go _away_."

At first you don't understand what she's talking about, so you ask her gently, quietly what she means, but she just cries and cries and doesn't say anything else. You think you should let the others know that you've found her, but you don't want to let go. Instead, you just sit there with her for a while, until the phone in your back pocket buzzes and you stand, scooping Roxy up with you.

(Your whole body hurts and you're a little dizzy, and in the back of your head you think you've pushed yourself too hard, too soon. But you can't afford to give up now, because Roxy _needs_ you, she needs you to be strong and unyielding, even to your own mistakes.)

Slowly, careful not to jostle her too much, you make your way out of the room and down the stairs, leaving what you now realize was just a trap set for Roxy behind you with a vow to either lock the room tight or destroy it for good. You do your best to shield her from the rain—pressing her tight to your chest and curling over her as best you can—when you finally step outside, but when you warn her that it's going to be cold she doesn't respond.

The Infirmary is quiet despite the filled rooms, and Dirk is sitting with his knees tucked under his chin outside his own door when you enter. You wonder, then, if he'd heard you talking earlier. With all the people now crowding the building, you'd thought the noise would act like a kind of soundproof buffer against the incredible ears of the Cured, but you could have been wrong. Or he could have been listening specifically to you.

He jumps up when he sees you but doesn't say anything, and you don't comment on the fact that he trails after you into your room when you enter. He looks worried—afraid, even—and you don't blame him.

You set Roxy on your bed (sleeping area, really. It's just a lump of blankets and clothes you use on the rare occasions you don't pass out in your desk chair, despite Jane's many pleas that you get a real mattress) but when you try to move away she lets out a shriek loud enough to wake the dead and clings to your shirt like a frightened animal. So you stay, pulling her into your lap and wrapping the blankets around both of you.

Dirk just stands awkwardly by the door, looking lost, and you don't have the heart to send him away. Instead, you just hold out your phone and ask him quietly to let the others know that you've found her.

After a moment, you realize Roxy has started mumbling though her tears again, this time even less coherent than before. You catch the words _sleep_ , _die_ , and _scared_ , but it's so muffled and slurred you're not sure if she's even still able to form real sentences.

"Why didn't you tell me something was wrong?" you ask anyway, and all you get in reply is more muttering.

By the time Rose bursts through the door, Roxy has calmed down enough to stop crying. As soon as her mother kneels down next to you, Roxy reaches for her with one arm and pulls her closer to both of you without letting go of the iron grip she has on your shirt, effectively trapping the three of you together. You and Rose accidentally knock heads but don't do anything other than exchange a pair of apologetic looks as, with the new addition to your pile, Roxy starts sobbing anew.

Jane and (surprisingly) Sollux make their way into the room soon after, and join Dirk in uncomfortably hovering around the situation. He and your sister exchange a few quiet words, and then she starts crying too. It's nothing compared to her best friend, but enough for you to motion her over with a free hand you manage to wiggle out from the mess of limbs and blankets. She curls up against you and reaches for Roxy's hand, and you rest your chin on the top of her head.

The rest of your family trickles in one by one, coming and going over what feels like the next few hours. No one says much of anything, and you think that's probably for the best. Dirk, stiff and clearly distressed, relaxes just a fraction when Jake thumps into the room. It doesn't last long, though, because one glance at the four of you has your cousin sniffling, too. You hear Jane let out a wet laugh, and then he joins you, pulling an unwilling Strider along with him. Jake engulfs the two girls in a hug, unintentionally wedging Dirk next to Rose, and even though the poor kid is rigid as a brick wall she wraps an arm around him, too.

Jade pokes her head in and doesn't stay long, but the two of you share a look that has you making an internal promise to talk to her later— _really_ talk to her. All this emotion has you in the mood for a good ol' fashioned heart-to-heart, something you haven't done with anyone in quite a while.

Karkat, Feferi, and Eridan trail in just as she leaves, and you figure Fef must have heard and dragged Eridan along to check on her. She and Karkat start getting watery-eyed, but they all retreat before anyone else starts bawling. Sollux goes with them, waving a little in your direction as he withdraws from the room. You nod back and hope it conveys your thanks for his help.

Eventually, Roxy falls asleep, either worn out or having finally succumbed to the alcohol in her system. Rose breaks the silence by whispering that she's going to take her back their room, but you shake your head. It's still pouring outside, and now that Roxy is finally calm you don't want to wake her. "Let her stay here," you murmur. "She might get sick in the middle of the night, and even if she doesn't she won't feel super great in the morning."

Rose sighs, but Jane says, "I'll stay with her," and then Jake nods.

"Me, too."

You can't help but smile a little. Of course they will—they'd go to the ends of the earth for her, just like any of you. "And I'm not going to kick you out or anything," you tell Rose. "We might not have any spare mattresses left, but I'm sure there are extra pillows around here."

There's a pause, and then Rose hums quietly. "It might be for the best, thank you."

"No thanks needed," you shrug. "Now, both of my legs have fallen asleep. As much as I love all of you, I think it's time to break up this feelings jam." You can practically _hear_ Dirk's relief, and as soon as Rose releases him he jumps up, almost losing his balance in the process. Jake snorts a laugh, but Jane quickly shushes him with a hand over his mouth. He has the decency to look embarrassed.

When everyone on top of you is finally untangled, you slide out from under Roxy and tuck her in as best you can. The motion pulls on your staples and the pain in your back is becoming unbearable, but you don't say anything. Instead, you set off with Jake and Jane to find what spare sleeping materials you can. When you return, Rose is curled up next to Roxy.

The sun has already gone down, but you know you still have a miles to go before you can sleep. Suddenly you feel exhausted right down to your bones. The events of the day are finally catching up with you, and you know you've already long-since pushed your body too far for what it's endured. As much as you don't want to admit it, you're only human.

You lean up against the wall, immediately regretting it but in a single instant too tired to move, and sit on the floor, elbows resting on your knees. Rose frowns at you from her daughter's side, pressing her lips in a thin line. "Get some rest, John. We'll be fine in here—I'll have plenty of hands to help if I need it," she says softly, gesturing toward the door where Jane and Dirk are dragging in more blankets.

When she hears Rose, your sister stops in her tracks and squints at you, looking you up and down like she's suddenly suspicious. "I'll be fine," you wave them both off, but you must sound as out of it as you feel because Jane's expression slides easily into a glare.

"Liar."

Yeah, you can't actually argue with that. So instead of replying, you turn to Jake. "Grab a plastic trash can from one of the rooms, maybe Vriska's. I think it's empty. No, wait—actually, get two. If there isn't a second one in there, steal it from somewhere else in the building." As he goes, you fix Dirk with a tired look. "I sure hope you're not squeamish. It's going to be a long night."

* * *

**[6/11/2037]**

Roxy vomits three times before dawn, barely half-conscious, and twice more before noon the next day.

She wakes up sometime after nine, coherent enough to realize where she is and start crying again, but you and Jane and Rose are right there to tell her it's going to be okay. Jake had left for training on only a few hours of sleep around seven, so only the four of you are left in the room and Dirk isn't much of a hugger. Although he still didn't have the full story—it wasn't yours to tell, and no one else had brought it up—he'd stayed awake all through the night, silently vigilant while the rest of you took sporadic, unwanted naps. You hadn't asked him to do that, and you have no idea how to thank him.

Eventually, you all get Roxy smiling through her killer headache with light conversation totally unrelated to the day before. She doesn't say much—just listens—but that's alright with you. Dirk tells her about working on Tavros's chair and what he wants to do with the next model, and Jane chuckles about Cronus's latest fiasco in the kitchens while Rose contributes her own snarky commentary. The atmosphere in the room is relaxed, hushed. Almost peaceful.

When Roxy finally feels like she can hold something down, Jane bolts off into the rain to fetch ginger tea, but as soon as she's gone Roxy curls up with her knees to her chest and it's like all the joy is sucked out of the room. You wonder, then, just how much of a face she'd been putting on for her best friend. The rest of you go quiet.

"I fucked up," she finally says, and it sounds so bitter and full of self-hatred you immediately want to shush her. But you don't, and Rose doesn't, because she's not finished. "I got too scared by somethin' I shouldn't be anymore, and I couldn't deal with it. And that's pretty stupid." Her voice breaks a little, but she doesn't cry. You think maybe she's run out of tears.

Through most of the night, you'd mulled over what she'd said back in the Cabinet when you'd asked her what happened. How she was afraid you and Rose were going to die, how she'd talked about _them_. And after a while, you'd started to understand. "This is about the attack, isn't?" you say after a moment, and when she buries her face in her knees you know you've hit the mark (as much as you wish you hadn't). The color drains from Rose's face right before your eyes, and she pulls her daughter into a hug.

"Oh, Roxy. I'm sorry, I should have been keeping a closer eye on you. I should have—"

" _No!_ " It comes out with so much force you can see her little body shake, and even muffled by the sheets still pulled up over her legs her voice sounds loud. "I should've been able to _handle it_ , you know? I've been around all this just as long as everyone else. I should've been _fine_ , but they kept showin' up in my dreams and all over everywhere when it gets dark and now every time it rains I _see them_ and I _hear them_ and _they just won't go away!_ " She really is trembling, now, and even though it takes more strength than you'd like you get up from the floor and sit next to her, wrapping a loose, injured arm around both her and Rose.

"It's okay to be scared," Rose says. "It's normal, especially of something like that."

You nod. "I'd be worried if you weren't."

But Roxy just shoves you both away. "That's not _fair!_ You've seen them so many times. You're _used to it_ , and you don't go—you don't run off and try to _forget!_ You _deal with it_ like regular people!"

Rose pulls her back, and Roxy's too drained to fight her off. "That doesn't mean we aren't afraid." 

"Bullshit."

Suddenly, Dirk breaks in, quiet and solemn. "I still fear them, and I saw them every day. Hundreds of them. I stayed inside, sheltered when they attacked this place, but I know what it's like to watch the monsters swarm the people you care about." When you glance up at him, his eyes are hard, but there's a sadness in his expression you don't think you've ever seen before. Granted, you've only known him a few weeks, but it still seems so unusual. So heartbreaking. He's a kid who had to be strong, who had to grow up too fast. Just like Roxy.

Rose hugs her tighter. "See?"

Roxy snorts, though, and it sounds harsh against the muffled downpour outside. "You don't have nightmares, though. You're not terrified to sleep like some kid waitin' for shit to crawl out from under the bed."

But Dirk shakes his head. "On the contrary, I'm forced to relive the same scenes over and over again every night. It's been like that for years, only lately I think... I think maybe they've gotten worse. When we fucked up outside Laramie and had to leave Bro behind, he wasn't scared. But I was. And even though I didn't see him die while I was awake, I watch it happen on repeat when I'm not. The only difference is that I'm used to it."

There's a moment of silence after that, because none of you are sure what to say. In a way, though, you understand. Years ago, you'd fought your closing eyes every night, but in the last few you've started avoiding it altogether. Burying yourself in work, in research. You'd always told yourself it was because you didn't want to waste the time unconscious, but now you wonder if maybe that wasn't the whole truth.

Then Roxy starts to laugh. It's a sad sound, almost hysterical, and you all just sort of look at her like she's lost her mind. But when she looks up at Dirk, you see a kind of relief in her eyes. "That's messed up," she says, and he just nods.

"Yeah, I guess it is."

Thankfully, you hear the building's front door open, and Jane comes rushing back in with a covered mug in her hands. "It's a little hot but I think this will he—did I miss something?" She stops, taking in your solemn expressions, but Roxy smiles at her.

"Thanks, Janey. I think I'm feelin' a lot better now. Let's see what you got." And just like that, the tension fades again. It's amazing how Roxy can do that, you think. Change the mood of a room in a single instant. It's a testament to just how strong she is, even if she won't believe it herself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (':
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! And a very special thank you to my absolutely amazing proofreaders, [Chris](http://chrisytopher.tumblr.com/) and [Lucy](http://psuedopassionfruit.tumblr.com/). You guys put up with my craziness, my weird questions, and my constant prying for praise. You put more time and effort into helping me become a better writer than I think anyone else ever would for a fanfic, and I'm so grateful. 
> 
> As always, feel free to comment here on Ao3 or message me on [my blog](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/), where you can also find fanart of the story, character profiles, and other fun things. If you have anything you'd like me to see (like fanart or a post about the story) I also track the [freightstuck tag](http://tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck/) and [ my personal tag](http://tumblr.com/tagged/egbertiian/). As a side note, my birthday is coming up on January 25th! I can't believe I've been writing this for almost three years. I started when I was seventeen, and I'll be turning _twenty_! Holy cow!
> 
> I also realized that I haven't been linking chapter themes in the ending notes for quite some time. The theme(s) for this one are [_So Close_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rcg1ubkAeo) and [_So Far_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKy8dq06zjk) by Olafur Arnalds and Arnor Dan. I'll refrain from listing what I've missed unless anyone specifically wants me to, but you can subscribe to the [Freightstuck playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI) with all of the chapter themes, character songs, and assorted music associated with the story if you'd like. I update it whenever I'm brainstorming or writing. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for reading! <3


	17. Okay

 

**== > DAVE: WAKE UP IN A HALLWAY**

Something hits your leg and you jolt, shocked more than hurt. Your head snaps back—almost hitting the wall behind you—and it's then that you realize you're _not_ in your room, but instead sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning next to a closed door somewhere on the first floor of the building. Oh, right.

Through the small windows in the Infirmary's front entrance, you can see that daylight hasn't arrived, but you can still hear the muffled hiss of rain outside. Your first few thoughts are a jumbled mess of _what happened?_ and _where is everyone?_ and _what time is it?,_ but the moment you notice a dark figure standing over you all of your senses jerk into action. (You've gotten slow since arriving, you think, because _before_ you would have been on the attack the moment your leg had been kicked, maybe even a few seconds ahead.)

You must not look as threatening as you'd like, though, because when you glare up, ready to spring to your feet, the man doesn't step the _fuck_ off and leave you alone. Instead, he scowls down, arms crossed. (Your left foot is suddenly wet, and it takes you a moment to realize that his long, black coat is soaked completely through, dripping water on everything in its path—including you.)

"Slick—"

His glare—at first only mildly confused—sharpens, and he jerks a finger to his thin lips in the universal sign for _shut the fuck up_. It's so forceful and urgent that you're caught off guard and your jaw clicks closed.

And in the beat that follows, you hear it. Or, rather, you _don't_. Because aside from the storm, there's nothing _to_ hear.

The building is finally, _finally_ quiet. Eerily silent, almost, so contradictory to the cacophony of panic and confusion brought on by yesterday's disaster you almost wonder if you're still asleep. Even the muted hum of conversation from locked rooms is gone, and everything feels strangely empty. Unreal, almost. It's not a calm quiet, though—the whole building feels tense, taut like a rubber band pulled so tight it's on the verge of snapping, and one wrong move could shatter it all.

You blink up at Slick, your groggy voice suddenly sounding like a shout in the dark, echoing even though you know that's impossible.

He jerks his head down the hall toward the stairwell, but you must not move fast enough because a moment later he's grabbing you roughly by the forearm, manhandling you to the door. You start to whisper something—to protest because seriously, _what the fuck_ —but before the third syllable leaves your throat his hand is clamped down over your mouth. You're honestly tempted to bite his palm, but he's wearing a pair of black leather gloves (the kind that scream _fancy-ass motherfucker_ and _no fingerprints left behind at the scene of your murder_ all at once) and you doubt you'd do much damage, anyway.

So, silently seething, you resign yourself to the situation, but do your best to make the whole thing as difficult as possible. He half-drags you into your room, neither of you saying a word the entire way (although you both manage your fair share of grunts and growls), and once inside Slick tosses you toward your bed, shutting the door behind him. You catch your balance before you land in a heap on the floor, though, and stay standing.

Now voluntarily trapped, you stare at each other, both looking pretty fucking ticked but neither willing to speak first. He has his arms crossed again, and you're still too disoriented to put up a collected front so your fists are clenched at your sides, too-hard nails digging into your skin. Eventually, you just can't take how _calm_ he is and explode.

"What the _fuck_ was that?" you hiss, and immediately Slick shushes you like some _kid_.

That sets you fuming even more, but before you can retort, he lowers his voice and says. "Jesus, _I_ ought to be askin' _you_ that. When I left your ass in here yesterday, I told ya to stay put for a reason."

You narrow your eyes in the darkness, wondering if he can see you. You're fully aware that he's human, but for some reason you have the kind of odd, unsettling suspicion that he knows exactly where you are and what you're doing. Unlike John, who'd (probably) only made it look like he could, Slick gives off a kind of confident vibe unhindered by the night, like the lack of light isn't any real disadvantage. You wonder, then, who he'd been before the world ended. (No one good, that's for damn sure.)

"You forced me in here and _left_ without an explanation," you snap back, softer this time but still full of as much venom as you can muster. "And you didn't even lock the fucking door, like we're on the damn honor code or something. You couldn't have seriously expected me to sit on my ass and wait like some shitty princess. With all that was going on, that's bullshit and you know it."

Slick exhales slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose with two gloved fingers, and you can almost hear him ask God for the patience not to punch you. The whole thing lasts eight seconds, the longest sigh you've ever heard, but when he finishes it's like he's blown all the rage out of his lungs, leaving only mild frustration and exhaustion behind. A deliberate self-tranquilizing technique, you realize. Interesting. "That was on me, I'll admit that, but use your damn head, kid. Ya had to have figured somethin' big was goin' down. Why the fuck were ya sittin' there in the first place? How long were ya even—Jesus."

He looks so genuinely concerned—rough around the edges and well hidden for sure, but it's _there_ —you can't help but deflate a little, too. "I didn't go down until after dark, when shit was Zen and the halls were empty, but I sat at the top of the stairwell for most of the afternoon." And God, _God_ that had been horrible. But staying in your room hadn't been an option, because with all the yelling, the crying, the pleading breaking through the walls and floors it was like a physical force had pulled you out, willing you to _find Dirk now find Dirk make sure he's okay find Dirk_. But the moment you'd opened the stairwell door you'd heard—

And suddenly, somehow, you couldn't move.

So you'd just stayed, frozen for hours, listening to the chaos even after _it_ died down, your brother not forgotten but your legs still refusing to move for far too long.

Slick sighs again. "I guess since I haven't been chewed out yet, no one saw your sorry ass?"

All you can do is shrug. "Of course people saw me—I was in the middle of the goddamn hospital super highway until, like, midnight—but John never came upstairs, if that's what you're asking. By the time I made it down, the first floor was a fucking ghost town." 

"That still doesn't answer why ya were passed out in front of his room, though. Which, for ya especially, was probably the worst thing ya could've done. Sneakin' around, I get—but _sleepin'_?"

You blink at him, wondering if he's suddenly pulling your leg. (You _hope_ he's pulling your leg.) His expression stays serious, though. "That's _John's_ room?" you ask, and it comes out louder than you intend.

"Fuck! Keep your damn voice down," Slick hisses. "How the fuck did ya not—Christ, you've either got a set of real gamblin' stars watchin' over ya, or you're just so awe-inspirin'ly _stupid_ the universe is takin' pity."

You grit your teeth, tempted to shout back and maybe also laugh at how fucking _ridiculous_ the whole thing is. It's a weird feeling. "I didn't _mean_ to fall asleep!" you bite back instead, throwing your hands up for emphasis. "I was looking for Dirk, and I heard his voice behind the door, and I just— _ugh_."

Slick raises an eyebrow at you, now looking _amused_ more than anything at the situation, and all that does is make you angrier. "So ya heard your brother's voice, figured he was just talkin' to himself in a room ya already knew wasn't his—I'm guessin' ya just, what, blocked out every other person speakin' in there?—sat in the hallway for who knows how long, and didn't once think _this is a bad idea_?"

You don't have a decent response to that, so you just grit your teeth. Because yeah, okay, maybe he _does_ have a point. But you'd been—you'd been _really fucking worried_ , damn it. You had no idea what had happened, and then you'd heard that _scream_ and you'd just—

What kind of brother freezes up when his kid might be in danger? What kind of _Strider_? Everything feels so messed up, like the Dave from weeks ago is someone completely different, somehow not _you_. Because for some reason, everything now is _too much all of the time_ , like every feeling, every sensation is amplified exponentially in your brain, and you don't know how to deal with it.

So you'd just found him and sat there and listened—not to what he had been saying or who he was with, but just to the quiet sound of his voice. Like it was some kind of anchor, the one thing that made you feel the least bit okay, because as much as you want to believe he needs you, _you_ need _him_. (Although you'd shoot yourself in the damn foot before you ever told him that.)

Slick just watches you, a look in his eyes somewhere between curious and sad that you don't really understand, until eventually you run both hands through your shaggy hair and sigh. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again, I was being stupid, blah, blah, blah." He rolls his eyes, but seems pacified.

"Yeah, okay. Just remember that _my_ ass is as much on the line as _yours_ if ya screw up." He turns around, then, and puts his hand on the door handle. "I'm not goin' to lock ya in here, but it's not because I'm bein' merciful or whatever—I just don't have the damn key. So stay _put_ , for Christ's sake."

And before you have the chance to snap back at him, he's gone.

* * *

For once, you decide to do as you're told—not because you respect Slick's creepy ass, but rather out of some fleeting sense of self-preservation. Left alone, your brain finally starts to process what may or may not have happened the day before, and you come to the realization that you don't have a damn clue about _anything_. You should have asked that bastard while you had the chance, you think, and at some point just before the sun rises you find yourself half-wishing in the midst of soul-crushing boredom that John shows up at your door, awkward and annoying and (somehow still) intimidating, just so you have someone to be pissed at. 

You begin drifting off as the first gray rays of the morning heave their way through the rainclouds still bearing down over everything, but as soon as your eyes slip closed the commotion of the day begins. It's so sudden, so stark against the strange silence that had fallen over everything in the night that you don't get more than an hour or so of rest. Not that you need it, really—you're not sure how long you'd dozed on the first floor, but it had to have been a decent nap—but rude awakening does a pretty fabulous job of putting you in a bad mood for what will probably be the rest of the day.

The phone you'd been given is still dead, so—left with nothing else to do—you spend most of the morning with your back against the closed door, listening to people move through the building. It reminds you a little bit of the time you'd spent plotting your first escape, and even though you know that was only three days ago it feels like a lifetime has passed.

You don't realize you've fallen asleep again until the door opens and suddenly you're sprawled out on your back in the hallway, blinking up at Slick who may or may not have been caught off guard just as much as you. It's hard to tell, though, because as soon as he sees you he starts _laughing his shitty ass off_.

Fed up and (definitely not) embarrassed, you reach out and yank his ankle, throwing off his balance so that in less than a second he's flat on his ass, too. That effectively shuts him up, and, as you watch, his scarred face flicks through every emotion in the book—surprise, anger, resignation, amusement—and after a moment he's howling again. It's a kind of full-bodied, deep guffaw you would never expect from him, but as soon as his one visible eye starts to water his laughter begins to die down.

"Jesus, kid. That was brutal," he chuckles, shaking his head, and you just kind of stare at him, wondering if you've finally lost your mind. Or if _he_ has. "Good afternoon to ya, too."

You realize, then, that you're not the only ones in the hallway, and the few people scattered around have all stopped dead in their tracks to stare at the two of you on the floor. There are several heads poking out of the surrounding rooms, and everyone is looking at you both with some mixture of confusion and mirth. You don't recognize anyone at first, but as Slick stands, brushes himself off, and offers you a hand, an odd squeaking noise—like metal rubbing against metal—starts, and you look up in time to see a short kid who can't be much older than your brother make his way out of a far room. He's in a wheelchair (that explains the noise, you think) and even though you haven't met him in person you think you have a pretty decent idea who he is.

By the time you're back on your feet, he's made his way over to the two of you, and you see that he's got a stack of manila folders in his lap. They slide dangerously when he stops, but before they can all hit the floor Slick reaches down to grab them. "Thanks," the kid says a little sheepishly, grinning.

Slick just waves him off. "These're for John, right?"

"Yeah, I was going to s-send him a message about them, but if it's alright could you bring them—hey! Doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing, you know!" The kid reaches up and snatches the files back from Slick, who had casually flipped one open while he was talking. Right before your eyes, he goes from timid (and maybe a little bit sad?) to assertive, and you can almost see him puff up like a miffed little bird. "You know what? Fine! I'll just ask him to come get them himself, asshole."

Slick chuckles, though, and holds his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, Nitram—couldn't help myself. We'll take 'em down, though, no worries. Give 'em to Strider, though, if ya don't trust me." He jerks a thumb in your direction as the kid rolls his eyes.

"How do I know _he_ won't look, either?" he says, sending a suspicious squint your way.

You mirror Slick, palms out in placation, and shake your head. "No worries here, bro. Got no interest in people I don't know, anyway."

There's a tense moment where he looks you up and down, like he's trying to figure out whether or not you're telling the truth (or is it something else?), before he sighs and holds the stack out to you. "Thanks, I really appreciate this. I'm Tav, by the way. We've met before, but I d-don't think you remember."

"Dave, although I guess you already know that," you say, holding out a hand after you tuck the folders under your other arm, and Tavros shakes it. He's got an unexpectedly firm grip.

Suddenly, his phone beeps, and someone down the hall calls his name from an open door. He thanks you one last time before rolling back the way he'd come, and then you and Slick are back where you started.

"Well," your babysitter says, stretching, "I guess that means we at least got somethin' to do for the next five minutes of our miserable lives." He turns and heads toward the stairwell door without glancing back to make sure you've followed, shoving his hands in the pocket on his slacks.

When the two of your make it to the first floor, the noise level picks up, and if the second level was busy the first is almost _crowded_. The building's front doors are open and you can see that the rain is still coming down in sheets, but that doesn't seem to bother the strange mix of human and not(?) as they file out in groups. Everyone is laughing and chatting, a strange clash against what the atmosphere had been like yesterday, but under it all you can see that everyone is exhausted.

You suddenly realize that this place is so much bigger than you'd originally thought, and the strange churning of what can only be cabin fever starts bubbling in the pit of your stomach. You want to get out there and see everything.

No one pays you much attention as you follow Slick to the door you'd been sitting outside of last night—the one with the worn paper DO NOT DISTURB sign written in _terrible_ handwriting—and for that, you're grateful. You can't help but look around, though, and stare at everyone else instead. The room across the hall where you'd seen your brother twice now is closed, and you're not sure if you're relieved or not. Your last conversation is still fresh in your mind.

Slick waits for you to catch up before he raps his knuckles on John's door, and when there's no immediate answer he knocks again. Over the rain and surrounding conversation, you hear a muffled, "One second! I'm just—hang o— _fuck!_ " There's a crash, followed by more loud cursing, and a few people in the hall briefly turn your way before going back to their business. Without waiting for an invitation, Slick opens the door and yanks you inside after him, quickly closing it when you're through.

You're about to tell him off, but as soon as you catch a glimpse of what's going on you freeze and the words die in your throat like you've been strangled.

In the center of the room is a long lab table covered in bandages, surgical tools, and a least two towels. Papers are strewn everywhere, haphazardly tossed across the countertops that run around the perimeter of the place, and one or two have even made their way into a large, stainless steel sink built into one section. Lab equipment, most of which you don't recognize, is lined up on every available surface save for the table, and books are covering every other available space. It's an impressive mess of organized chaos.

John himself is sprawled out on the floor, one leg tangled in a toppled desk chair. He has an arm slung over his face so you can't see his expression, but he's still muttering out curses through gritted teeth. He's shirtless, and everything around him—the table, his pants, the floor—is covered in blood.

The smell of it hits you like a brick wall, and you suddenly feel like you're going to puke.

Slick is the first to move.

In an instant, he's at John's side, kicking the chair away and helping him up. John doesn't acknowledge either of you, but the minute his face is uncovered you can see that his eyes are closed, screwed shut, and there's a smear of red on his cheek next to a set of healing scratches that look like they could be a few days old, scratches you've seen before but never really _noticed_. Slick barks at you to right the chair, and as soon as you do he helps John sit down, who just kind of lets himself be moved without pausing his stream of strained profanity. A full minute passes as you and Slick stand there, neither sure what to do, until John takes a deep breath and finally opens his eyes.

He seems surprised to see the two of you, but the second he does his expression shifts from agony to _rage_. "Get _out!_ " he shouts so loud you think maybe you jump, but Slick doesn't budge. "I said _wait,_ God damn it! Get the _fuck_ out of my office!" There's a kind of wild look in his eyes, some combination of fury and pain (and maybe fear?).

Slick just crosses his arms. "And what, leave ya here so ya can bleed to death in silence? Christ, this is takin' the whole _carry your own cross_ thing a little too far, kid," he bites out, and that only makes John angrier.

" _Get the fuck out!_ "

Instead of responding, Slick pulls out his phone and begins typing as John glares up at the both of you like he can set you on fire with his gaze. He tries to stand up, but lets out a loud string of curses and thumps back down just as Slick re-pockets his cell. "Vantas is coming, Gandhi, whether ya like it or not. We just came to drop some shit off, but now that I'm covered in blood I ain't leavin'."

"Then, _Dave_ ," John hisses, turning to you, " _you_ get out."

You're all for that, and without waiting for a response from Slick you drop the files in a heap on the floor and bolt, stomach churning.

You're already halfway down the hall when the door slams behind you, but instead of making your way to the stairs you head for the main entrance and _heave_ as soon as you're out in the grass. _God, God, fuck, God._

You don't even realize you're drenched until you've emptied your stomach, but you're not chilly and wonder—quietly, in the back of your mind—if it's the adrenaline that's keeping you warm.

Rather than heading back inside, you stand there in the rain, eventually leaning back against the side of the building and plopping your ass in the mud. A few people ask if you're alright, and you just kind of nod, numb.

John.

John had been the one you heard.

John had been _it_.

You watch the small crowd continue to file out of the Infirmary toward the building across, but don't really see them, instead lost in your own head as the screams play over and over again in your mind on loop, the ones that had terrified you, left you unable to move. Eventually, you hear the frantic slapping of running footsteps powering through the rain, but whoever it is—a short, gray young man without shoes, like you—doesn't stop and instead shoots right into the building.

You still don't feel cold.

You don't know how long you sit out there, muck seeping through your underwear as the weather gives you what's probably a much-needed shower, but sooner or later the crowd dies down and you're left alone in silence.

* * *

Slick isn't the one who finds you. 

You don't even hear him until he speaks up, so you have no idea how long he's been standing in the building entrance, just out of the rain's reach. But when he does, you think you might have imagined it at first, because you honestly doubt that he wants anything to do with you.

"Bro?"

But when you turn your head, there he is.

"Sup, li'l man," you say, and your voice sounds rough, throat ragged from vomiting.

The two of you stare at each other for a moment, and you're struck once again by how different he looks. Not just his hair and eyes and skin and weight, but he seems taller—not by much, and maybe it's because you're still on the ground—and for some reason it makes your heart hurt a little.

His lips are set in a thin line and there are bags under his eyes like he hasn't slept in days, and to anyone else it might look like he's glaring. But you know—you know because you've known him his whole life, and because for almost half of it you _raised_ him—that he's not. No. He's worried, you think.

Or maybe not, because you glance down long enough to flick some of the dripping hair out of your eyes and when you look back, he's gone.

You sigh and curl your legs up to your chest, crossing your arms on your knees and resting your chin on top of the whole pile. The long windows on the building across from you are giving off a warm, yellow-ish glow, and you can see large groups of people laughing, eating, talking inside, most sitting at tables while the others walk around or stand by their friends. It's a strange kind of oasis through the gloom, and as much as you've hated the noise of the masses over the last few days you have this unsettling, sudden realization that you haven't seen that many people in one place in _years_. And you're overwhelmed with an all-consuming desire to both join them and run as far away as you can. It's a crushing dichotomy, like you're being pulled in two directions at once, and your head starts to hurt.

(You're lonely, so lonely, but you've become too comfortable in your solitude to give it up on a whim.)

You hear footsteps, but don't bother to look up because you think it's someone else heading toward the congregation. When they stop next to you, though, you turn just as Dirk plops himself down next to you in the rain. (He's barefoot, now, and you don't think he was before.)

He doesn't say anything and neither do you, so the two of you just sit in silence, watching through the windows like a pair of voyeurs peeking in on some other life.

It's oddly soothing.

Peaceful moments can't last forever, though, and after a small eternity passes he finally speaks up, still looking ahead. It's quiet, though, and stoic. Not in a bad way, but in the kind of way that's uniquely Dirk—where you're forced to listen to what he says and not just hear the words, because if you don't you'll miss their meaning.

"I'm glad you're alive."

You don't respond immediately. As you watch, someone in the other building is knocked over as another person—a young woman, maybe—leaps onto his back from behind, and a cup goes flying. Someone three tables away catches it effortlessly, but those in between aren't so lucky as whatever had been inside rains down on them. One victim stands, looking ready to pick a fight, but the small figure of a girl you think might be Jane bolts into the frame, calming the storm before it starts.

"I am, too."

And it's strange to say it, because for all of the fighting you've had to do over the last six years, all of the pain you've gone through just to survive and see another day, you're not sure you ever stopped to think about whether or not you _wanted_ to live. You were just... doing it. Because your one and only goal has always been to protect your little brother, to make sure he's okay. Maybe not always happy, but always breathing. But here—here in this place of safety and _hope_ —that role isn't really necessary anymore. Because you'll be able to go through days and weeks and months without having to look over your shoulder for the next monster, the next thing that could take him from you.

You feel empty, purposeless, lost—but somehow you know it's true.

You're genuinely _glad_ to be _alive_.

* * *

Eventually, Slick finds the two of you sitting in silence, but he just stands in the Infirmary doorway for a few moments before disappearing back into the building. You know, though, that this surreal moment of almost-contentment won't last much longer, so you saver it while you can. A few minutes pass, and then a new figure appears where Slick had left, this time calling your name. 

"Strider." It's gruff and angry, not a voice you recognize, and both you and Dirk look up. It's the man you'd seen running before. He's still not wearing shoes, and you wonder if you've started a trend. "The larger one. John wants to see you." He turns around before waiting for a response, and you and your brother share similar looks of mild, masked confusion. You shrug, though, and stand, stretching as you go. Your right foot is asleep.

Dirk follows you inside, but turns into his own room without looking back as you pause outside John's open door, wondering if you should knock on the frame out of some weird sense of misplaced hospitality.

John is sitting in his chair, now with a shirt on, and you can see wrapped bandages poking out above the collar. The blood has been cleaned up and the papers gathered, and they're now sitting in a neat pile on the desk in the corner of the room, stacked with the folders you'd dropped earlier. Slick is leaning against the table with his arms crossed, watching with an amused smile as John rolls his eyes at the man who'd come to get you, who's glaring right back. He's the first to notice you, and nods in your direction. "Hey, kid. Feelin' better?" You nod back.

John and the other man turn to you, and the latter lets out a frustrated groan. "Why _me_ , though?"

"That's mean, Karkat," John says, but he's smiling. Exhausted, clearly in pain, but _smiling_. (You think, then, that maybe he really is someone you'll never be able to figure out.)

But when you realize what he's said, your eyebrows shoot up. "Karkat? Like, angry gray text Karkat?"

The man turns his scowl on you, then. "Yeah, so?"

Not really what you'd pictured.

"...You're shorter than I thought you'd be."

Karkat throws his hands up, then, and lets out a kind of angry yell. "Oh _hell_ no. This is _not_ going to work," he shouts as John and Slick start laughing.

"No, no," John chuckles, wincing so slightly you think you might have imagined it. "This is going to be _great_."

"I hope your injuries kill you."

You just kind of stand there, more than a little perplexed (both at the conversation and how _different_ the atmosphere feels from before) and finally you speak up. "Mind filling me in?"

Slick laughs again, flashing you a smile that for some reason does _not_ look comforting. "Congrats, kid! You're getting a new babysitter!"

"Awesome, now I don't have to follow your crusty ass around anymore," you say, shrugging, and that sends John into another fit of giggles as Slick just keeps grinning.

Karkat, however, is _fuming_. "First of all, I am _not_ a babysitter. That's now what this is. He's not a baby, and I will _not_ be sitting on him. I'll be _watching_ him, that's it. Second, _this is not going to work._ "

John rolls his eyes and stands (slowly), waving you inside the room. "Lighten up, it won't be that bad," he says. "All you two have to do is, you know, _not_ kill each other, and it'll be fine!"

"That's not reassuring," you mutter, and Karkat actually nods in agreement.

"See?" John smirks, and that sets Karkat off shouting again. Instead of humoring him, though, John just waves him off and turns to you, his expression suddenly serious. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said earlier. That was... pretty uncalled for."

You're honestly surprised, and wonder not for the first time if he's actually two people (or if he's intentionally fucking with you). You shrug. "No worries, bro. Shit happens." He seems satisfied with that answer, though, and relaxes just a fraction. "So are you actually marrying me off to Grumpy, or am I still missing something here?"

John chuckles. "I thought _you_ were Grumpy," he says, and you blink, because holy shit.

"You remember that? Dude, that was _months_ ago," you say.

He just shrugs, still smiling. "Clearly you do, too." (You can't really argue with that.) "Anyway, no, you're right. I'm not _actually_ setting you up. We're still not really sure what you are—sorry, that sounds insensitive? That was insensitive." He pauses, suddenly looking a little worried, but you shake your head.

"No offense taken, I get it. Keep weaving your tale."

"Okay, cool. So, yeah." Suddenly, he sounds kind of serious, and his smile is replaced with a sort of pensive look. "We don't really know what you are, but you exhibit all of the same physical symptoms of a typical Cured individual. Advanced sensory and sensorimotor development, strengthened keratin output and therefore I can only assume both enhanced protein processing and hormonal secretion, possible damage to the frontal cortex and potentially the limbic sys—"

"John." Karkat barks, and he blinks.

"Right. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, right, oka—"

"Wait, wait," you hold up your hands, suddenly processing what he'd said. "I understood less than half of what that was, but there were brain words in there, right? So you're saying I have _brain damage_?"

There's a tense pause, and then John suddenly starts backtracking. "No, no. I mean, maybe? But clearly you're mostly fine so any lasting permanent effects won't be—"

" _Maybe?_ " You say it a little louder than you intend to, and even Slick is frowning now.

"Um!" John looks like a (very large) baby deer caught in headlights, like he's not sure how to respond without making you freak out even more.

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, Karkat steps in to diffuse what feels like a _bomb_ in your chest. "Look, it's not a big deal, alright? We _all_ have brain damage. That's the fucking point. You, me, Nep, and everyone else in the Cured camp. The shit he's talking about doesn't have anything to do with your intelligence or whatever the fuck you're worried about—although I doubt there's much in there worth saving, anyway. It's impulse control, rationality, and emotional stability. That kind of thing. Not a huge problem if you know how to manage it, and it's pretty mild in everyone here anyway. Clearly you're not running around looking to maul everything that moves, so you're fine."

John nods. "Yeah, that."

There's another tense pause while everyone stares at you, waiting for your response. It makes sense, really—you know you hadn't gotten out of Laramie unscathed, and you'd never really thought about the things that make the monsters what they are. It's still fucking _terrifying_ , though, knowing that you might be messed up in the head. Damaged. Changed. _Different_. But you look at Karkat, and think of the mish-mash of people you'd seen through the window in the other building, and John—who's clearly really fucking smart and knows what he's doing—and think that maybe, maybe this will be okay.

(Or maybe you're just in denial.)

You don't say any of that though. Instead, you look at John with a deadly, serious expression, and say, "So _that's_ why I want to punch you in the face every time I see you."

There's a brief moment when you think you've said the wrong thing before the room _explodes_ with laughter, Slick actually having to hold onto the table as Karkat doubles over, clutching his stomach. Even John roars, choking a little (and genuinely wincing this time), and you can't help but smile a little, too.

"No, no," Karkat wheezes, waving a hand. "That's totally normal."

"Rude!"

"He didn't say anythin' that wasn't true, kid."

"Oh my God, I hate _all_ of you," John says, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head. There's no venom in his voice, though.

When most of the laughter finally dies down, Karkat catches his breath and chuckles, "Anyway."

"Yeah," John huffs, " _anyway._ The point of this whole thing is that Karkat's going to help you manage some of the stress and get used to the changes in your body. We assign every new Cured a mentor, so this isn't really a new thing, but we don't really know the full extent of what's going on in your system right now so that's why I'm assigning you to him. He and Nep were the first, and Karkat is head of the camp so he knows what he's doing."

"That almost sounded like a compliment," Karkat teases, smirking at John, who glares back.

"Don't push it."

You're following this, though. It makes sense, and you vaguely remember Terezi telling you something along similar lines. What you don't know, however, is what it all means for you. "So, what, am I moving out or something? Leaving the nest?"

John shakes his head. " _Unfortunately_ no, I'm keeping you here for the time being. It'll be easier for me to monitor your physical progress while you're here, because—like I said—I still don't really know what's going on. And also—" He glances briefly at Karkat, who suddenly looks tense. "—there really isn't any other place for you to go right now." You want to ask, but you get the feeling you'll find out sooner or later. And you don't really want your new hall monitor to blow up again.

"Okay, that works," you shrug, and then suddenly—cripplingly—another thought occurs to you. "What about Dirk?"

When John answers, though, he doesn't seem concerned, and that eases your worry (but only by a fraction). "His symptoms are both less severe and less advanced, but similar in their own way. He'll be assigned someone, too—Nep, so he can work with Equius, and possibly Sollux later on if things go well."

"Oh," you say, because you can't think of anything else.

"Don't stress over it," John says, looking at you with a kind of not-but-almost-pity that makes you—for some reason—a little angry. But you push it back, because you don't want to start a fight. And you're getting tired of feeling pissed all the time. "We're working with what we know at this point, and we'll deal with what we don't when the time comes. You're in good hands."

"So what am I going to do? You're making it out to be like some intense shounen protag training bullshit."

"What is this, the fucking Spanish Inquisition? So many questions." Karkat huffs, but John shushes him.

"Whatever he wants, pretty much," he says, gesturing toward Karkat.

"That's not comforting."

John chuckles, though. "For now, you probably won't be doing much, but when the rain lets up I assume you'll help us with rebuilding and repairs."

You're about to ask what that means, but Karkat beats you to the punch. "What do you mean _we_? Because I'm pretty damn sure that _you're_ not going to do anything. You're a fucking mess, John."

They glare at each other, and John bites back, "I'm _fine_."

"Bullshit."

Slick stands up straight, then, and hums low in his chest. "That ain't the point here."

John and Karkat scowl for a moment longer, before John sighs. "Fine, whatever."

The conversation drifts after that, and you get the impression you've been told everything you'd come for. The two are still tense and you get the impression there are going to be a few choice words exchanged later, but Slick redirects what he can until John asks you to see if your brother is awake. When you knock on his door, though, he doesn't answer, so you assume he's either asleep or has his headphones on. No one seems bothered, so you try not to let it get to you.

Eventually, people start to filter back into the building, followed shortly by Jane, who storms in with tray of food in hand, demanding why John didn't come to lunch. You realize that you haven't eaten, either, and as soon as that comes to light she whirls on him again, _then_ demanding to know why he hadn't given her a headcount of how many meals to deliver. He shrugs sheepishly, claims he'd forgotten, and she launches into a tirade about how _he's_ not normal because he doesn't get hungry, so he shouldn't use that as a basis for everyone else.

(You're not sure how true the statement is, but you get the feeling he's not telling her the whole story, and wonder if she knows he'd been on the floor bleeding out just a little while ago. It's not your job to get in the middle of a family squabble, though.)

(It's Slick's.)

She leaves, telling you she'll be back in a bit with more food, and you take that as your cue to retreat as well. Before you go, though, you ask John for a cell phone charger, and he laughs.

Slick doesn't follow you.

* * *

**[6/12/37]**

You spend the rest of the afternoon in your room, totally voluntarily this time, listening to music on your phone. It's a simple way to pass the time, but somehow you feel _rested_ inside—warm almost—as the minutes turn to hours. You don't know whether it's the music itself, your short conversation with Dirk, or the fact that for the first time in _years_ you have safety and some semblance of freedom, but you don't question the sensation. You don't think you need to.

The rain doesn't stop, but it slows down considerably, and when evening rolls around dim sunlight shoves its way through the looming clouds, reflecting off the thin shower still coming down. You fall asleep wishing it away so that you can finally start living your new life.

The next morning, it's reduced to more of a light drizzle than anything, and you won't deny that you're disappointed. Still not used to the fact that you can leave whenever you'd like, you decide to open your door but stay in the room, watching people pass through the hallway as the day begins. A young Cured (you're still getting used to using that word in your head; you just hope you don't accidentally call someone a _monster_ sometime in the future) woman who looks vaguely familiar—like you've met her somewhere in a foggy kind of dream—brings you breakfast, and only when she introduces herself do you freeze up, almost dropping the tray you're given.

_Feferi_.

The girl you'd almost _killed_.

You can't even get the words _I'm sorry_ to form in your throat, because how does a person go about apologizing for something like that? What would you even say? Where could you start?

But she seems to understand what you're trying to tell her before you get the chance, and after an awkward moment spent staring at each other, she takes the food out of your hands, sets it on the foot of your bed, and then wraps you in a fucking _hug_.

You really _do_ blank out, then, for two reasons: you have no idea why she would do something like that, and as soon as her arms grab your torso you realize you can't remember the last time you were touched like _this_. Touched with some kind of genuine affection, held so close to another person. Embraced. She's a head shorter than you, thin but definitely not weak, and you're struck by how soft she feels. Not in touch, really, but in some other way. Like the air around her exudes unconditional companionship and the promise of care. She flashes you a light smile and says, "Don't worry, it's okay. We're family now, right?" before letting go, and by the time your brain starts to thaw she's gone.

Your breakfast disappears quickly as you eat in a daze, not sure what to make of the whole thing.

You aren't given long to think about it, though, because as soon as you finish your last bite John appears in your doorway. "Oh, you're done? Good, that means we can head out, then," he grins, rocking a little on the balls of his feet. At first glance, he looks calm, amused almost, but as he fidgets you can't help the nagging thought that he seems nervous. About what, though, you have no idea.

"Head out where?" you ask, setting your fork down.

"The eastern field. Karkat and the others went straight there from the Cafeteria, so we're already a little behind."

"So I get to start my hero bullshit today? I thought you said that wasn't going to happen until the storm fucked off."

John glances at your window and shrugs. "Everyone is eager to get their lives back on track, and it's barely misting. We don't know when it's going to start up again—this _is_ the PNW, after all—and now is as good a time as any. I have some shoes and socks for you down in my room, so get dressed and let's go."

He leaves and you blink a little at his back, still not sure how you feel about the enigma that is John Egbert, but you decide to leave things as they are for now. You close the door and rifle through the small pile of clothes you've accumulated over the past few days like a fire's been lit under your feet, and bolt down the stairwell until you make it to the first floor, at which point you slow your pace to a casual walk. (Can't have people think you're actually a little _excited_ , right?)

John is waiting outside of his room with a pair of boots, and when you ask him why he hadn't just brought them up to you when he could he laughs and says he didn't feel like it.

The two of you walk through the drizzle in a strained silence, you following just a step behind John as you look around and drink in everything you can of your surroundings. Though disgustingly humid, the fresh air feels nice against your skin and in your lungs, and you can't help but wonder what the temperature is because—like yesterday—you aren't the least bit chilly.

The gray, brick buildings nearby are sparse, spread out with cracked sidewalks snaking a series of pathways between each. They're short—not small, but nothing compared to the skyscrapers of Houston, and, with the exception of maybe one, none are taller than two stories high. The whole place is covered in grass, surrounded as far as you can see by forest and green, and it finally hits you _months_ too late that you're very, very far away from home. (Or maybe not, because this is home now.)

When you pass what looks like a small man-made settlement behind the longer building you'd been watching through the windows the day before (the Cafeteria, maybe?), you almost trip because you're staring so hard. You've never seen anything like it before.

As soon as you come to the top of the hill just past the main structures of the place, you're immediately met with a sight so contrasted against the sturdy buildings and quaint, serene little tents you suck in a harsh breath through your nose. John glances at you and sighs, running a hand through his hair.

"Welcome to the Cured campground. Or what's left of it, at least."

"Holy shit."

Holy shit, indeed. The wide expanse of what may have at one time been ramshackle homes is nothing more than a pile of carnage, most tents completely collapsed and those still standing in a tragic state of disarray that almost makes you think death, for them, may have been more merciful. The grounds are littered with natural debris—rocks, mud, tree branches, torn grass—and the scattered remains of smashed furniture, clothes, and other household trappings. Toward the back edge of the mess, half a dozen downed pines have crushed everything in their path, scattering leaves and sticks throughout the wreckage. You think there may have been a wall or fence around the whole place at one time, but now all that's left are chunks of broken wood and a smashed line of fallen stones.

There are hundreds of people weaving through it all, picking up pieces of the destruction and carrying them toward the forest, where you can see piles of debris already forming. A group is by the ruined wall, knocking down what's left, while others are slowly dismantling the destroyed tents.

As you watch, a woman kneels down to pick a small something up out of the mud, and immediately she starts to cry.

"What happened?" you say quietly, struck by the sheer tragedy of it all.

"The storm hit us hard," John replies, just as soft, sounding weary to the very marrow of his bones. "We lost a lot, and it's going to take weeks for everyone and everything to recover." He begins making his way down the hill, then, exhaustion shifting to something like determination. "But we can pull through."

You follow him without a response, still shocked by what you're seeing.

He heads for the wall first, and as you approach you see a small group of people huddled over something, deep in conversation. The ones you can see are tall and well-built like John, and you recognize Jake among them. John calls out when you're a few feet away, and they all look up at the two of you with mixed expressions of surprise and relief. As their formation breaks, you see that Dirk is with them, too.

"How are things coming?" John asks, coming to a stop next to his cousin. Dirk nods a little in your direction, and you return the gesture in greeting.

"As well as they can be," Jake sighs. "We're just getting started, and before we can even think about rebuilding the wall we need to dismantle what's left of the old one. The foundation won't hold up against another flood." The others around him nod, their expressions solemn. "Dirk and Equius finished up plans for a replacement, and the suggestion was made to dig a ditch around the entire perimeter to help siphon off water." He gestures to the damp notebook in your brother's hands, likely the thing they had all been looking at, and you can see now that it's covered in detailed architectural drawings and the occasional smudged math problem. You'd always known the kid was a genius.

"So what are we starting with—ditch or dam?" John crosses his arms, glancing between the four men. You don't recognize the other two, but their similar long, dark hair and tan features make you think they might be related.

Before anyone answers, though, a voice calls out John's name and you turn to see Karkat walking toward you with a group trailing behind. He sounds pissed. "What are you—"

"Not now, Karkat," John bites out, suddenly tense, and the two glare at each other while the rest watch on, confused. Except for you, because you think you have an idea of what this is about.

"I thought we agreed that you—"

"I said _not now_. I brought Dave, and you can't seriously think I'm just going to leave now that I'm here." 

"But—"

"No."

" _Fuck!_ " Karkat roars, throwing his arms up. "Quit cutting me off. Fine, okay? Die, for all I care. Come on, shithead, let's go." He stalks off, and his following parts like an ocean as he passes. It takes a second for you to realize he's talking about you. John nudges you with his elbow, though, and you get the message.

As you leave, you hear Jake start to ask what's going on, but John tells him it's nothing and steers the conversation back to what they'd been talking about without another word on the subject.

(You're starting to understand the meaning behind what Slick had said when you'd found John on the floor.)

You don't have time to dwell, though, because as soon as they're out of sight, Karkat starts barking orders, sending sections of people to cover cleanup in different areas of the camp. Then he turns to you and runs a hand through his damp hair, huffing.

"So what do you want _me_ to do?" you ask, shoving your hands in your pockets. "I'm at your mercy, right?"

"Shut up, don't remind me. I don't have time to hold your hand, this isn't some fucking grade school class—this is real life, and this is survival. So we're going to jump right on top of this shit and hit the ground running." He crosses his arms, fixing you with an intense, serious look. "Do you think you're strong?"

"What?"

"Are you deaf or something?"

"No, and yeah, I'm not bad," you shrug, not really sure what he means by that.

You feel the punch before you even see that it's happened, and _Jesus fuck_ it hits your stomach _hard_.

Karkat might be small, but _damn_.

Before you can ask him what the hell that was for, though, he shakes his head. "Well, you're not. Whatever you thought you were before you came back from the dead is gone. It died with you. You're a different person now, whether you like it or not. Physically, mentally—the whole clusterfuck. Whether you've started to realize it or not, I don't give a shit either way, but from here on out you're going to have to rebuild everything you know about yourself from the ground up. So, lesson one: self-awareness. Are you cold?"

"No."

"Congratulations, me neither. But everyone else who isn't like us?" He waves a hand out, gesturing toward the people around you. "They're fucking _freezing_. It's forty degrees and raining, and there's a strong breeze, which means it feels even worse than that for them." You blink at him, then look down at your hands as the rain dampens them more with every passing second. Your fingers aren't numb, and you can barely feel it, you realize. Holy shit. _Holy shit_. "Surprise, motherfucker." 

"So I'm, what, immune?" you say, lifting your head.

"Not quite, but that works for now. Your first task is to start hauling ass with the rest of us without losing your shit."

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, not expecting that at all. You're not really sure what you thought he was going to make you do, but performing menial labor wasn't really on the list. "Easy."

He chuckles, though, and there's a mocking edge to the sound. "I give you an hour and a half, tops. Good luck, asshole." And with that, he turns around and walks off, leaving you to your own devices.

* * *

You last less than a third of that timeframe. 

Without the relative safety of your room or John and Karkat to focus on, you're overwhelmed in minutes by just how _much_ there is. In the open air, outdoors, there are so many sounds and smells and sights that are almost impossible to ignore, and the fact that it's all happening at once sets your brain on fire. If you thought the crowds in the Infirmary were bad, this is _hell_. You can't concentrate on anything, because you're trying to listen to what everyone around you is saying, trying to trace the source of at least four different scents, and trying to track every little movement the leaves in the trees around you make all at the same time.

You feel like your head's being relentlessly bashed with a sledgehammer, you're dizzy, and you think you might throw up.

You manage to move a decent stack of branches to the growing pile of debris at the forest edge, but that's only one trip. Every step you take feels like you're walking through quicksand, your legs are heavy, and your arms can't hold as much weight as you think they should because they feel like lead, too.

How had you not noticed this before? Maybe you had. But you've been stuck in the same building with no need to do any real work since you woke up, and when the end of a stick you're carrying jabs a painful spot on your back you realize your injuries haven't really healed, either.

You end up on your ass not long after you start collecting your second round of nature's crap, dropping what you have in your hands, because someone lights a fire somewhere nearby and suddenly that's all you can smell, all you can taste. It's like the blood—suffocating, crushing, and you can't get enough air.

You don't even realize you've started hyperventilating until someone is kneeling in front of you, grasping your shoulders and telling you to focus. It's John, with Karkat standing not far behind. "Breathe, Dave," John says, and you wonder how many times he's said that to you over the last few days. "You have five senses, so use them. Ground yourself. Tell me three things you can physically feel right now."

You hesitate, blinking at him like you can't really process what he's saying, because for some reason he's right in front of you but he sounds like he's a million miles away. When you don't respond, he repeats himself, gripping a little harder to get your attention. "Your hands," you say, and your voice sounds foreign.

"Good. What else?"

"The rain."

"One more."

"...Mud seeping into my underwear."

He laughs, relaxing, and it's like a lighthouse through the fog. Because suddenly, that's the only thing you can grasp onto—that sound, loud and relieved and tired. It blocks out everything and you look at him— _really_ look at him—and he smiles. "That works," he says, and you just kind of nod.

"Told you," Karkat grumbles, and John turns around long enough to glare before looking back at you.

"Do you want to go back?" he asks, and even though every fiber of your being screams _Yes! Take me back! Yes!_ _I can't do this!_ you shake your head slowly. "Are you sure?" You nod.

At that, he releases you and starts to stand, offering you a hand. You take it, and it's like the same thing happens—suddenly, that's it. All of your attention is focused on that one thing, his hand in yours, and you're aware in less than an instant of everything about it. Calluses, muscle, warmth; how gentle his grasp is as he hauls you up; how unexpectedly wide it is compared to your own.

Karkat turns to you, then, and you're so focused that you don't even realize he's talking until John has let go. "Before, when you were human, you didn't have to think about the things you were feeling. When you ate dinner, were you aware of the table underneath your elbows? Your ass in the chair? No, just the food you were probably shoveling into your useless pie-hole. You're going to have to re-train your head to register one or two things at a time, and push off shit you don't want to feel."

John nods. "When it's too much, concentrate on three specific sensations. And when you start to get overwhelmed by one thing, focus on a different sense."

You sway a little, not quite steady on your feet, and John jerks like he's going to catch you if you really do go down. But you don't, so he doesn't have to. "Thanks," you say. Your head still hurts.

But you don't feel like you're dying anymore.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah," you wave him off, hoping to salvage what little dignity you have left. "How much time do I have left?"

"A little less than an hour," Karkat says, "but you've already blown it so that's pretty much irrelevant at this point."

"I'll be fine."

John looks worried, but Karkat just rolls his eyes. "Sure."

* * *

When lunch rolls around, there's a kind of exodus out from the campground as people move back toward the main buildings in search of food. You'd stopped working hours ago, after your second near-collapse, and Karkat had told you to go sit at the edge of camp and _feel_ instead. You had no idea what he'd meant, but his only response when you'd called him out on it was, "Meditate, asshole," and that was that. You'd chosen the hill north of the campground—the one just above the destroyed wall, not the one you'd walked over when you arrived—as your oasis, and had tried your best. 

It feels weird at first, not doing anything. Just sitting there, watching and listening, but as groups start to leave you think, maybe, you're getting the hang of it.

Looking down, you have a decent view of the camp itself, as well as the construction going on below you. Dirk is there, along with Jake, the two other men from earlier, and a handful of others, so you spend a decent chunk of time just observing your brother. Away from the crowds, it's easier to clear your head—but not by much.

You wonder if Dirk is having as difficult a time as you are. He'd woken up long before you, so you know he's had more time to adjust. You still have no idea how or how badly he'd been injured, how much of that shit had clogged up his system. If it wasn't the same kind of torrential flooding of the veins _you_ had to deal with (you may have been pretty out of it, but you've seen your body, seen the scars) maybe he'd gotten off easy.

His complexion is still darker than yours, starkly bright from head to toe with his newly-blond hair and strange orange irises, but it's nothing like you. You've been left to sit in a vat of bleach for days and then hung out to dry in the sun—your hair is the color of snow, your skin not much better, and your _eyes_. Holy shit, your eyes. There's nothing left—just blood. You hope the difference in the two of you is a good sign.

He's not doing any heavy lifting, and is instead fielding questions, explaining plans as the last of the rubble is finally cleared, what little was left of the barricade gone at last. As you watch, you notice Jake always approaches your brother to say what he needs to rather than shout across the grass, and every time he moves away your brother shifts, too, so he's always in his line of sight.  (Just how much have you missed over the last few weeks?)

John comes and goes, chatting with his cousin and a dark-haired (human) woman every now and then before weaving back into the mess of fallen tents, talking to people as he walks. True to what may have been his word, he doesn't try to help physically, but he takes on the roll of a leader, directing, raising morale, treating minor wounds, and keeping everyone's spirits up. He doesn't have to be here, you realize. He's severely injured—his side, his wrist, and most likely a few other things he's hiding—but he's still out in the cold and rain with everyone, offering support.

When the sun starts to set, you're still at the top of the hill, but slowly the crowd thins as people begin to leave for good, their work finished for the day. By now, most of the rubble is out of sight, and digging for the ditch has already begun. John calls you down, shouting up that you can go back to the Infirmary if you want, but you wait for Dirk to depart before you do. You feel strangely calm, and over the past few hours you've managed to keep yourself sane with only a few slip-ups. Progress, though slow, is still progress.

You're dead on your feet and in desperate need of a shower when you finally make it back to your room, and as soon as you're alone, you strip down to nothing but a clean pair of underwear and collapse face-first on your bed. You want nothing more than to just black out here and now so you can get as much sleep as possible, because tomorrow you're doing it all again.

The universe isn't so merciful.

Not long after you lay down, there's a knock on your door, and you let out a kind of muffled whine that's neither an invitation to enter nor a demand that whoever it is stay outside. It's taken as the former, though, and when you hear the knob turn you moan, "Leave me alone to die," without lifting your head.

Two feminine shrieks break you out of your misery and the door slams shut.

"Put some clothes on!" a young voice—Jane, maybe?—calls, while the second person laughs hysterically at your expense.

"Make me!" you call back, unperturbed and quite frankly too wiped to care.

"We're here to do you a favor, Davey! Have some respect for our innocent li'l eyes!" Ah, she's with Roxy.

You grunt and groan and make as much of a dramatic fuss as you possibly can as you haul yourself up, taking extra care to put on a pair of pants slower than glacial movements across the North American continent, and open the door shirtless. Jane immediately covers her eyes, but Roxy just starts laughing again, clearly tickled by how red her best friend's face is getting under her hands.

"Sup, ladies," you say, scowling down. "I need my beauty sleep, so let's make this _favor_ quick."

Roxy rolls her eyes and chuckles, "Don't say it like that, Davey. You make it sound like we're hookers on call or somethin'." Jane actually looks like she's going to pass out at that.

You shrug. "You called it that, not me."

"We're here to cut your _hair_ ," Jane wails, "not... not _whatever it is_ you're suggesting." Roxy pats her back, but the look on her face tells you it's not a very sincere gesture of comfort.

"Don't worry, Janey, he knows John would gut him if Davey was tryin' so hard to seduce you."

Jane peeks through her hands at Roxy, still blushing like a sinner in church. "Maybe we should make _him_ do it, then."

"Have you seen your hot bro try to cut hair? Davey'd end up bald or lookin' more like a rebellious kid than he already does."

"Hey! It's not _that_ bad," you huff, but you can't deny that you _do_ look a little ridiculous with the half white, half orange mop of tragedy that is your hair.

Roxy reaches out to pat your arm, then, too. "Oh, honey..." She shakes her head.

"Fine! Whatever! I'll put on a shirt," you huff, and start walking back into your room. The two girls follow you, Jane still looking uncomfortable but the embarrassed tinge slowly fading. Roxy waves you off, though.

"Nah, you're fine. Janey's gotta used to it at some point, you know. She's seventeen, time to grow up."

Jane looks mortified all over again. " _You're_ fourteen! Don't even—augh!" She throws her hands up, face heating up a second time.

This time _you_ roll your eyes, not really wanting to get into an argument about the benefits and drawbacks of desensitization to the male physique with two teen girls. "Where do you want me to sit?"

"The floor is fine," Roxy says. "That way we won't get anythin' on your bed."

You sigh and sit cross-legged in the middle of the room, resigned to whatever they've got in store for you. "Do your worst."

After a few more encouraging words and some physical coaxing (shoving) on Roxy's part, Jane finally kneels behind you and gets to work. Thankfully, sitting out in the rain two days in a row has left your hair relatively dirt-free, but it's still tangled to shit and largely more trouble than you think it's worth. She wets it down with a spray bottle and starts snipping away after a painful bout of combing, and as large chunks of red start to litter the floor around you, you can't help but feel a fleeting sense of cleanliness you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing for a while. You hope you'll be able to take a real shower soon.

When they're done, Roxy sweeps up the mess of cut hair with her hands and very solemnly asks if you'd like to say a few words before she sends the pile to its grave in the trash. It hits you, then, that this is the last time you'll ever see ginger from your own head, so you raise a hand in mock solute and say, just as seriously, "Rest in peace, my fallen brothers. You've done well to keep my head warm all these years, but now it's time to part ways." You wipe an imaginary tear from your eye and look away, dramatic as always, covering your face. "Take it from my sight!" You're not sad, really—it's just hair. But what it represents is much larger, you think. The old Dave really _is_ dead.

Jane sighs, shaking her head, and promises to come back later with a broom so she can clean the rest.

After Roxy returns (you still don't have a trash can in your room, so she'd had to find one somewhere else), the two stay with you a little while longer. You all end up sitting on the floor, you with your back leaning against your mattress as the two girls face you, their shoulders touching as they support each other's weight. They ask you how you're feeling, how you liked your first day out of the Infirmary, and you ask them to explain a little more how things work around here. You know some of the big-picture details from your Pesterchum conversations on the way here, but the details are still a mystery.

Eventually, the conversation shifts to Dirk (you're relieved to hear how close they've gotten, glad that he has some friends), and then Jake (the two of them share a mischievous look that makes your eyebrows raise, but they don't elaborate on what it means and you don't ask), and then John, at which point you go kind of quiet. They pick up on the change in mood, and Roxy sighs. "He means well, you know."

You don't answer immediately, but you sigh, too. "I just don't get him."

And then _Jane_ sighs, and it's a real respiratory party up in the club with all this sad exhaling. "He's just stressed, I would try not to take it personally."

"It's getting better, though," Roxy says, a little defensive. "Okay, well, not _better_ , really. But he's not as pissy as he was a couple of days ago."

You think back, then, to when you'd been crying on the floor, and how he'd held you, whispering apologies. And how he'd shown up in your room that night, looking like a completely different person. And how he'd joked with you today, and talked you down from your panic in the camp, and—

Contrary to popular belief, you're not arrogant enough to think _you'd_ been the one to cause such a change in behavior, but you understand (a little) what Roxy is saying. That doesn't mean he isn't a jerk, though.

"Less of an asshole or not, I still don't like the guy. Sorry, Jane—I know he's your brother and all—but I can respect him without wanting to be his buddy or whatever the fuck you two were trying to do."

Roxy's plea days ago that you give him a chance, that you try to get close to him because they think he needs someone like you, is still fresh in your mind. You still think it's shitty, the way they'd borderline manipulated you and John, pushing you to chat over Pesterchum and everything that had come after that. Yeah, it had been fun to talk with him, you'll admit that—you'd enjoyed your conversations with him. But in person? No thanks.

Jane looks down at your statement, maybe a little hurt, but as much as you feel bad for telling her that, you're only speaking the truth. You've been blabbing like old ladies for the past hour or more, and it's not like you're going to stop now just because the topic is uncomfortable. That's what gossip is, right?

Roxy, however, looks ticked. "Have you even _tried_ to talk with him?"

"Of course I have! We've talked plent—"

"I don't mean talking, I mean _talking_ ," she huffs, and you just kind of blink at her. She isn't finished, though. "Not about your condition or food or whatever, but, like, _really_ talking. We know you got along before you came here! Hell, he dropped everything and forced a bunch of people out on a suicidal rescue mission in the middle of the night just to find _you_ , asshole! _John left to make sure you were okay_ , and John _never_ leaves! He hasn't left this whole fuckin' place in _years_ , but he did! For _you!_ "

"And everyone else!" you bite back, and you realize now that you're on the verge of shouting. "I was as good as dead, and I was _okay_ with that, damn it! He went back for Dirk and TZ and Vriska and Gam, and I just happened to be some kind of shitty bonus he had to take care of."

" _No!_ " Roxy yells, "That's _not_ what happened! I wasn't there, but I heard enough to know. And when he got back, he slept on your floor for _days_ , hoping you would wake up and be okay. He's never done that for anyone else! We've been here for _years_ , brought hundreds of people back on the verge of death, and he's never once kept watch over someone for that long. He defended you when the others wanted to leave you behind, and he defended you when _Karkat wanted you killed!_ "

Jane sucks in a sharp breath, then, and Roxy goes pale at what she'd just said, covering her mouth. "I shouldn't have told you he said that," Jane hisses quietly, and it's directed at her friend. In the silence that follows, Roxy's last words ring through the air, echoing in your ears like they're being played on some hellish loop. You aren't sure what to say—no one is. You can't even begin to process all of the information that's just been shoved onto you.

Suddenly, there's a knock on your door, and before anyone can say anything it opens. "Is everything alright in here?" John says, and you all just kind of stare at him with wide eyes. Both Jane and Roxy look like they're about to start crying, and when he sees that his expression shifts from concern to _murder_. "What's going on?"

There's a pause, and then Jane stands, grabbing Roxy's arm and dragging her out the door. As they shove John out of the way, she hisses, "Nothing," but her shaking voice betrays the lie.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme song for this chapter is ["Today Has Been Okay"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGb2h1xo4qQ) by Sleeping At Last! Remember to follow the [freightstuck spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI) so you can listen to all of the chapter, character, and story themes. (:
> 
> A special thanks goes to [Chris](http://chrisytopher.tumblr.com/) and [Tree](http://treeprince.tumblr.com), who proofread and edited this chapter. You guys are amazing, and none of this could be possible without you. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you liked this chapter! Fanart, comments, and questions are always welcome, and you can hit me up [on my blog](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com), in the _freightstuck_ tag on tumblr, or in the comments section below. To see character profiles, technical information on the virus, and an overview of the Cured/Infected, check out [this page](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/freightstuck_characters) on the blog. 
> 
> My birthday is just around the corner on Monday, the 25th, and I'm excited to announce that after three years in the making, this story has garnered over 14,000 views and 530 kudos. Thank you all so much for your continued support and encouragement, and I hope you all continue to enjoy reading Freight as much as I enjoy writing it. We still have a long way to go, and I'm excited for what's to come. (:


	18. Mothers and Children

**== > ROSE: MEDIATE**

That is, of course, a task far easier said than done.

You're in the Seasonal Camp with Kankri when you first hear the furious, vindictive shouts. Everyone is on edge after a day spent cleaning what's left of the Cured campground, and some anger is to be expected—unwelcome, yes, but not unforeseen. Especially here, in the territory of those who've managed to escape death for six years relatively unscathed.

With the Cured effectively homeless for the time being, you and the rest of your team have rearranged the Admin Building and set up a kind of refugees' refugee center, clearing out the rooms like you would during the winter when it's too cold for the Uninfected to sleep outside and setting up makeshift beds. Given the sheer size of the Cured population, however—a fraction of yours but still too much for the building to handle—some members of the Seasonal Camp have opened their tents and given a place to stay to those who can't fit. That was and has been a small saving grace, and while most members of the camp have been either welcoming or indifferent to the temporary additions, not everyone is so forgiving.

Your name is ROSE LALONDE, and you are NOT PLEASED. In fact, you are VERY TIRED, and that has put your already-strained emotions just over the line of INCREDIBLY PISSED OFF. If you were a different woman, you might PUNCH the next person to raise their voice, but unfortunately you have an aggravating INTERNAL INCLINATION to be LEVEL-HEADED, even in the worst situations.

You weave your way through the tents toward the source of the sound with Kankri on your heels until you hit what looks like a modest crowd, circled around an open space where two men—one gray and one not—are on the verge of blows. They're fuming, screaming insults and profanity, and the restless audience looks caught halfway between cheering either side on and intervening. It reminds you of a street brawl or some stupid hyper-masculine fight club, and you know if you don't do something things will move from tense to unsalvageable very, very soon.

Some people on the edge of the group see you and immediately part as you approach. You're not particularly tall or intimidating, but you move with a kind of purpose and wrathful determination that screams _do not get in my way_. You aren't the oldest in the compound by any means—even Kankri has four years on you—but your authority has long-since been recognized as the original leader of this physical space. The University was your home first, and _you_ were the one who welcomed _them_ here. And since then, you have done your best to care for everyone personally. You're not respected out of fear, you think, but out of reverence, and though you never asked for that kind of power there are times—times like this—when you don't move to deny it.

The two men don't notice your arrival immediately, and you hear the Uninfected yell, "You heard me—I don't want you and your _kind_ near my family. How do we know you fucking _monsters_ won't kill us in our sleep?"

"And how do _we_ know you won't do the same?" the Cured shouts back, stepping closer, getting in his face. "If you're so damn scared of us, who's to say you won't slit our throats during the day just to get rid of us? If we wanted to destroy every single one of you fucking _humans_ , we wouldn't have to do it while you're defenseless. We could do it whenever we want. _We're_ not that fucking cowardly, but _you are!_ "

"Did you hear that?" The Uninfected man turns to the crowd, then, waving his arms out. "Did you hear that _threat?_ " A murmur rolls through as some shake their heads, others turning to their neighbors and whispering nervously. Most look angry, though—at both of them.

"That wasn't a threat, you fucking bastard, it was a statement of fact! We _won't_ because we value the balance we have here, and because we _aren't_ monsters. But _you_? You're so fucking arrogant you lash out at shit you don't agree with like some kid with anger issues."

You don't stop when you break through the crowd, and instead move right up to the two men, who turn to face you just as everyone goes silent, watching like this mess is a film drama. "That is _enough_ ," you say, quiet and deadly and strong. Immediately, they both shut up. Kankri comes to a stop just behind you, clearly just as pissed. "You are _both_ acting like children. If you have a problem, take it up with those in charge rather than making a scene."

The Cured huffs, crossing his arms and looking away like a scolded toddler, but the Uninfected scoffs and fixes you with a deadly glare. "Do _not_ call me a brat, woman. I'm the only one with an ounce of sense in this whole fucking place." He takes a step toward you, but you don't even blink. Instead, Kankri moves between the two of you and grabs his arm.

"Stop this immediately," he bites out, and the ice in his voice cuts through the air like a dagger.

"I don't want to hear shit from _you_ ," the man hisses, wrenching away. "You can't tell me a fucking thing. I know you side with _them_ because your brother's as much of a fucking _freak_ as they are. He's in charge of their kind—one word from that fucking monster and we're all _dea_ —"

Before he has the chance to finish, Kankri's fist is in his face, connecting _hard_ with his jaw. The man reels back, yelling in pain, but the damage is done. With fury in his eyes, he lunges at Kankri, shouting that his point has been made—that this is some kind of proof. The crowd looks uncertain, but Kankri stands his ground and addresses them all, ignoring the Uninfected as he aims a punch at his gut.

"This isn't about what Karkat is—this is about the fact that he is my brother, and I will not stand for some ignorant fool questioning his character. His appearance does not dictat—" he falters, gasping a little as the blow hits, but continues, his voice not losing strength. "His appearance _does not dictate_ who he is. The same goes for everyone else like him. They have been through hell with us, they have kept us alive when we're not capable of doing so ourselves, and now that the time has come to repay that debt we cannot answer back with insults and fear. We rely on each other, we are _all_ family, and if you do not agree take up your concerns with John and Karkat—the people you look to in times of uncertainty, the people you rely on for strength—instead of squabbling amongst yourselves and causing problems that are _petty_ compared to what we're dealing with as a whole right now."

"You're calling this _petty?_ " The man shouts, this time going for Kankri's face. Again, Kankri doesn't move.

"If my brother was a monster, you wouldn't have the faith in him that you do. If he was a monster, he wouldn't work every day to keep the peace."

The Uninfected roars, but the punch doesn't connect—the Cured reaches out to grab his forearm, stopping it in its tracks. He tries to pull away, but the grip is made of iron, and he doesn't budge an inch. "Stop. We'll take it up with our leaders like civilized people. Fighting now will only embarrass you." A moment of total silence passes, like everyone around you is holding their breath, before the Uninfected scoffs and the grip on his arm finally loosens. Without a word, he wrenches it back and stalks away, the crowd parting before him. As soon as he's gone, the Cured turns to you and nods before walking off as well.

After that, the audience around you slowly dissipates. A few approach to offer words of thanks or disagreement, but you meet them all with the same reply: "We are just doing our jobs." And it's the truth, really. The Gen Care team works to keep the people fed, happy, and flourishing in this tiny oasis at the center of hell. Diffusing disputes as much as you can is just a part of that.

Eventually, you're left relatively alone, and only then does Kankri start to sag. You put a hand on the small of his back and begin gently guiding him toward the Infirmary, thankful for the cover of both the cloudy skies and rapidly-approaching night. The hit to his midsection wasn't gentle, and you're both awed and proud of how he'd stood tall and taken it without fighting back to prove a point.

As you round the Cafeteria, though, he sighs. "This won't be easily resolved."

"No," you reply quietly. "But I believe the message was received, so to speak. You had some very powerful things to say—why have you never told Karkat what you just pronounced with so much conviction?"

He sighs again, longer this time, and runs a hand through his dark hair. "Because I am a hypocrite who cannot practice what he preaches. No matter how much I believe in peace and the sake of some greater good, I cannot deny that my brother scares me at times."

You hum, and glance at him out of the corner of your eyes. He looks defeated despite what could be considered a victory.

A part of you understands—understands _too well_. Because you're just the same.

For all of your talk about caring for the people of this compound, for ensuring that they're safe and stable, you'd missed something _so important_ you haven't slept properly in the two nights since. Your daughter—the greatest thing in your life, the person you would walk barefoot to the ends of the earth for, through hoards of Infected and fire and snow and storms for, the light you would give up everything, your body and soul to protect—had been suffering quietly and you hadn't noticed. She'd been in pain, she'd _disappeared_ , and you'd been so bound by some naive sense of duty you _hadn't fucking noticed_. And you hate yourself— _God_ , you hate yourself for that. No amount of apologizing, of loving, of caring will ever lift that weight, and the fact that she doesn't blame you does nothing to ease the burden of your failure as a mother.

But you won't tell Kankri that. You won't tell _anyone_ that.

"You still love him, though. That much is clear," you say instead of all the things you wish you could.

"Love is meaningless if one cannot express it."

"Perhaps. But there are many ways to show how you care for someone, and pushing Karkat away is not one of them."

"It is too late now," he says, putting a hand over his stomach where the punch landed and wincing ever so slightly. "It has been six years, and the bond broken by my cowardice isn't so easily repaired."

"Even so, it is not _ir_ reparable," you reply, and there's a kind of resilience in your voice that surprises even you. You wonder, then, if you're really talking about Kankri and Karkat anymore—or if you're speaking to yourself.

Kankri only hums in response, and you enter the Infirmary without another word.

John isn't on the first floor, so you leave Kankri in his office and make your way to the stairwell. Despite the fact that almost all of the rooms are filled, the whole place is eerily quiet, everyone's exhaustion almost palpable in the air.

The second floor, however, is far from silent.

As soon as you open the door, you're met with the sound of more yelling, _more_ fighting, though this time there's no morbidly-captive audience. Dave's door is open, and you can hear both men shouting at the top of their lungs inside. That alone puts you on edge—you can't remember the last time John raised his voice out of _anger_. Not frustration or fear or the simple need for volume, but sheer _rage_. And that's enough to make you pause in the stairwell exit.

"This isn't about _Karkat_ ," you hear Dave yell, and it's so loud and rough the sound almost hurts your ears. "This is about _you!_ You're supposed to be some incredible leader, but you're a fucking _joke!_ "

"I saved your fucking _life!_ " John roars back, and there's a thunderous sort of crunching noise that shakes the walls.

"You think I give two shits about that? I was a fucking hazard, a fucking danger to everyone here. I still am! I could have hurt people—I could have hurt _Dirk_ —I _did_ hurt someone, I hurt Feferi—and you put my safety above everyone else's out of some self-righteous sense of justice!"

"Your brother was just as much of a liability as you, asshole. If we'd gone through with killing you, he would have been next!"

It goes kind of quiet, then, and you realize you're holding your breath. When Dave speaks again, his voice is low and dangerous.

"I don't fucking get you."

"I've never asked you to," John bites back, just as cold. "I didn't save you out of pity, I saved you because I _care_ , Dave. I refuse to let anyone else die—not when I can save them. And I'll do whatever it takes to keep every single person I love safe."

"That's fucking _naive_ , John. Don't talk to me about _love_ and _caring_ and that bullshit—you were just being a selfish prick. You can't make up your fucking mind. You put yourself and everyone at risk to get me here, to keep me alive, and then you turned your back on me as soon as I woke up."

"From the moment we learned about you guys, all five of you were family. I didn't turn my back on you, I did what I had to do to keep you and everyone else safe and _alive_. If taking my personal feelings out of the equation as soon as they weren't necessary to save you was the answer, I would do it again. And it was—it kept you from killing anyone, and it kept anyone from killing _you_."

There's something in his voice—not a break, really, but a quiet plea that makes you think he isn't telling the whole truth. A kind of undertone that reminds you of your own words to Kankri, and now—just like with you—you wonder who he's really talking to: Dave, or himself.

"Bullshit," Dave bites out, and the dangerous edge in that one word is enough to get your feet moving again. You don't know if there's anything left to say, and if there isn't you worry they'll come to blows if they haven't already.

"John," you say as soon as you're in the doorway, and both men immediately turn to you. Dave is standing at the foot of his mattress with his hands out like he'd been waving them around, and John's are balled into tight fists. There's a sizable crack in the wall behind him, and you think that must have been the noise you heard. Some part of you is thankful he'd hit that instead of Dave. It speaks wonders of his self-control.

"Rose," he replies, anger still in his voice, but it's mixed with a concerned curiosity as he deflates. "What's wrong?"

"Kankri is downstairs with a minor injury. If you are done here, I would like you to take a look at him." You glance back at Dave, who's still seething, but he blinks at you and the rage starts to leave him, too.

"Rose?" He says, and you nod.

"We really must stop meeting like this, Dave," you sigh, trying to keep your voice light. He looks a little lost at that, and then sighs.

"Ah, right. Sorry."

The apology surprises you—and apparently John, too, because he suddenly looks a little lost. Without a word, he moves for the door and you step aside to let him pass. Perhaps Kankri's fight had been a blessing in disguise, killing two birds with one stone. It had proven a point in the Seasonal Camp, and served to diffuse whatever _this_ had been, as well.

As soon as he's out of sight, you turn back to Dave. Neither of you say anything, but he has the decency to look away from your stare. You don't think it's out of shame, though. His expression is still set in some shadow of a glare, and from what you know about him he's too proud to back down so easily.

But maybe—just maybe—that isn't such a terrible thing. No one has _really_ stood up to John in quite some time, and it's been even longer since anyone questioned his judgment on something other than his own lack of self-preservation. You don't know if this is a positive development or not, but you make a mental note to keep an eye on him—on _them_ —out of curiosity. It might be good for John to have someone who will shove back when he pushes. (But, then again, it could be disastrous.)

You turn to leave when he doesn't say anything else, but as soon as you step out into the hallway Dave speaks up. "I think I made Roxy cry. Could you apologize for me?" It's so quiet and small you can't help but wonder if this is the same person who'd been so full of righteous fury just moments ago. You shake your head.

"I think that is something you need to do yourself," you say, and walk away before he can reply. He doesn't try to follow you.

John is already downstairs, grinning and joking with Kankri when you return to his office. Kankri's ancient sweater is neatly folded up next to where he's sitting on the table, and you can already see an incredible bruise forming on his side. "I never thought I'd see the day when _you_ started a fight," John laughs, gently pressing on Kankri's ribs. His touch is light and clinical, but Kankri still winces.

You sigh from the doorway. "Technically he did not start the fight, but rather finished it." Kankri rolls his eyes and John chuckles again.

"Just as impressive. What got you riled up enough to throw a punch in first place, though?"

Kankri suddenly looks nervous, but hides it well enough that you doubt John notices. (And if he does, he doesn't say anything.) "Dissension with the current living situation was not unexpected, but the situation had escalated to the point where mild violence was necessary to get the attention of all parties."

You raise an eyebrow at him, and he shoots a small glare in your direction when John isn't looking.

"Mild violence, huh?" John says, and amused.

Kankri huffs, cringing again as his chest expands. "We were both left standing, were we not?"

John laughs again and stands up straight, finished with his examination. "I guess that's true. Looks like nothing's broken, but you're really going to feel this for a few days. No heavy lifting or aerobic activity, and try to put ice on it when you can. Other than that, there's not much I can do. I should probably take a look the other guy, too, but something tells me he won't come willingly."

Kankri nods and slips his sweater back on, lightly hopping down from the table. "That is good news," you say. "However, what Kankri neglected to mention was that the issue has yet to be fully resolved. I will be calling an Executive Meeting for tomorrow morning to address what's left."

John frowns, humming. "That's fine. I figured something like this would happen eventually." He blinks, then, and turns to you. "Oh, Roxy and Jane—"

"Dave has already informed me, although I wasn't aware of Jane's involvement. If everything is alright here, I will be on my way."

John nods. "Yeah, thanks."

You leave without much fanfare, wishing Kankri well before heading back out into the gloom. The sun has completely set, now, but you know your way around this place well enough to navigate toward the Dorms with relative ease. You check the room you and Roxy share first, but she isn't there, and you can't help the sharp spike of worry that shoots up from your stomach to your throat at not finding either of the girls immediately. The fact that Jane is most likely still with her doesn't do much to quell your unease.

(You wonder if you should check the Cabinet—check _that room_ —but as soon as the thought crosses your mind you beat it down with every fiber of your being. No. _No_.)

Halfway back down the stairs, your phone buzzes.

— gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 20:24 —

GG: help!!!

GG: i need an adult!!!

TT: You are twenty-three, Jade. That makes you an adult.

GG: okay but i need an adult who knows how to deal with crying teenagers

GG: im not good at that

TT: Fair enough. I assume you are referring to Jane and Roxy?

GG: yeah we are in the library

GG: i think they were coming to hide with sollux but i was already here

TT: I will be there shortly. Thank you for letting me know.

GG: thank you!!!!

— gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 20:28 — 

You sigh and continue on your way, so severely relieved you almost start running as soon as you're outside again.

For all of her unyielding strength and outward optimism, Jade has always—or for as long as you've known her, at least—been the type to shoot first, ask questions later. Although conflict resolution (oftentimes through violence) is a strong point of hers, emotional turmoil is far from her forte. The facade of strength she holds up so severely serves her well for the greater survival of the compound, but your personalities are clearly suited for the jobs you've taken up. And this is not hers.

You don't doubt that she cares deeply for the girls—she's not passing the problem off to you, really. You suspect she simply doesn't know what to do.

(And even if it weren't your daughter and her cousin, you think you would still be the first person she asked for help. She trusts you more than anyone else on your team, and likely more than most people in the compound—that much had been clear the moment she'd let you see her cry. She is one of your closest friends, and you like to believe the sentiment is shared.)

You hear the sniffling and wailing as soon as you open the Library doors.

Sollux is standing awkwardly in the hallway with both hands in his shaggy hair, and as soon as he sees you he looks so thankful you think he might collapse. He motions you toward the main conference room and you give him a small smile before making your way inside, already mentally prepared for the worst.

Jade has a similar reaction, but it's buried under the combination of concern and panic written all over her face. She's sitting on the floor in the room's far corner with a girl under each arm, both of whom are clinging to her shirt like the answers to life itself are written on the fabric. She mouths a silent _Help!_ in your direction, and you sigh, shaking your head.

As amusing as it is to watch Jade suffer, though, you can't help but feel your heart break a little. Your _daughters_ are crying like it's the end of the world (all over again), and you suddenly want to give Dave a solid kick between the legs (just as a starting point) for doing or saying whatever he did. You are a _mother_ , god damn it, and your wrath is not so easily avoided.

Instead of dwelling on all the pain you'll cause Dave the next time you see him, you make your way over to the little bunch and curl up next to Roxy, pulling her into your arms. You reach out and grasp one of Jane's hands, and she holds on for dear life as the two of them don't even pause in their broken tears.

They're so small, you think—both of them. Too small to go through _any_ of this. They should have grown up and done amazing things—gone to high school and fallen in love for the first time and found hobbies and passions and _so much more_. But they couldn't and they can't. And they probably never will.

No one says anything for hours, and neither of the girls tell you what happened even when you do finally ask. You just hold on to both of them— _all three of them_ —until the sobs quiet down and you usher everyone, Jade included, back to your room for the night.

* * *

**[6/13/37]**

You never actually call the Executive Meeting, but your phone buzzes just after five AM with a message from John on the private memo board anyway, telling everyone to meet in the Library around six. You huff quietly, careful not to wake the two girls wedged together on Roxy's bed, and haul yourself up. Jade is sleeping on the floor, still dead to the world despite the fact that her phone is resting on her chest, and you wonder idly just how much sleep she's been getting lately. You know after the storm she'd moved back into the tent she shares with Jake, but more than a week spent in the greenhouse likely hadn't done her well in terms of rest.

You pick your way around her and grab a change of clothes, stuffing them in your shower bag as you make your escape. As much as you'd like to lecture Jade about her hygiene habits and drag her with you, you decide to let her sleep just a little bit longer. You think she probably needs it.

As soon as you step outside, the first thing you notice is the cold. It's still dark, and even though it's _June_ the weather hasn't exactly been tropical lately. You shiver, pulling your jacket closer around you, and pick up the pace. Halfway to the bathrooms, you're finally awake enough to make your second major observation on the weather.

It has finally, _finally_ stopped raining.

The ground is still damp so you doubt the sky has been clear long, but you can't help but smile a little to yourself. You don't believe in omens, but you think maybe—just maybe—this is a good sign.

When you make it back to your room, clean and dressed and ready to gather everyone but Roxy, the sun has risen and you can see its light unhindered for the first time in days. All three of the girls are still out cold, and you take one look at the dark circles under Jane's eyes and decide she can sit this one out. You're more than enough of a representative for the Gen Care team.

As quietly and gently as you can, you shake Jade awake and flash your phone in front of her face. Before she can ask you what's wrong, you put a finger to your lips and motion toward Roxy's bed. She gets the message, and not long after you toss her some of your own clothes to change into the two of you are heading out into the morning.

By the time you enter the main conference room for the second time in twelve hours, John is already there with Sollux, Karkat, and Nepeta. You're the last to arrive, and when you answer John's question about his sister he seems grateful that you'd left her behind.

As soon as everyone is settled in, John runs a hand through his hair and begins speaking. "I called this meeting at Rose's request, but there's actually something I want to bring up while we're waiting for the reason we're all here to show up." You take that to mean the men from yesterday, and aren't surprised to hear that you'll be starting before they arrive. Anyone other than those used to being summoned at all hours of day and night wouldn't be up so early without a fuss, and it could be some time before they're ready to face the wolves. "Thanks to the storm and everything that's come after, I think we should push the date for Jake's supply run back a few days."

You glance at Jade and see her tense up, but she doesn't shout or try to argue. She's had a fair bit of time to adjust to the idea of letting her cousin—her little brother—go, and at this point so many plans have been made it would be hard to change them without a fight.

Nepeta nods. "With all the chaos, we haven't kept up with our morning training, and it'll probably be on hold until we can get most of the damage fixed on our camp. Most of our people haven't been sleeping well, either, and that's a recipe for disaster out in the field."

"Exactly," John says, nodding back.

"It seems the most logical course of action," you add, "but given the state of things it will likely make the run that much more urgent." It's the truth—with the amount of damage sustained by the Cured's very way of life, the list of things needed from the next run has almost doubled. You've cleared out almost all of the spare clothes in the Cabinet to replace those unsalvageable from the destruction, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

John sighs. "True, but we can supplement the larger load with more manpower. Nep—who was originally supposed to go?"

"Jake, Eridan, Rufioh, and Meenah."

"Can we add Slick, Terezi, and Dirk to that list?"

Everyone sort of freezes, and even you catch your breath a little. Jade is the first to say anything. " _Dirk_? Why Dirk?" She demands, hitting her palms on the table. She isn't even trying to hide her frustration anymore.

John stays calm, however. "He approached me last night and asked to join. I told him I would consider it, and if we're moving the date back he'll have plenty of time to prepare."

"Plenty of time to prepare?" Jade seethes, her voice rising. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me? He hasn't even started training yet—he's still—"

John cuts her off and turns to Nepeta. "You've been watching him, how's his progress?"

Nepeta looks back and forth between the two cousins, then glances sideways at Karkat , who's sitting next to her. "He's been doing... really well, actually. You wouldn't know he changed just a few weeks ago. He hasn't really done a lot of physical work, but mentally he's, y'know, incredibly stable."

Karkat crosses his arms and nods, but he doesn't look happy about it. "Much better than his brother, that's for damn sure."

Jade isn't done, though. She stands, leaning across the table toward John. "You can't be serious! He's a _liability_. If they run into something, he's going to get Jake killed!"

John fixes her with a glare and doesn't budge even though she looks like she wants to leap over and hit him right then and there. "Technically, he has more field experience than Jake, so I'd say he's more of an asset than even him." Jade doesn't have anything to say to that, but she keeps fuming even after she's back in her chair. "They were originally slated to leave on the seventeenth, but four days just isn't enough time. We could tentatively shift that by a week to the twenty-fourth and play it by ear from there. If we need more time, we'll make more time. If they need to move sooner, that's fine too and we can switch out Dirk for Horuss. And I can't help but notice you're not complaining about Terezi."

"That's because she's _proven_ herself. She helped fight when the horde attacked camp. She hasn't been out on a mission before but she's not exactly weak."

"Dirk's perfectly capable of proving himself, too, and if he can't we'll go with plan B. End of discussion, Jade."

Jade huffs, and a few nods and murmurs of approval move around the room, and when no one has anything else to comment on the matter the conversation shifts to the incident from the day before. Apparently Kankri had filled John in on some of the minor details, but all eyes turn to you as you explain the situation in detail. You choose to paraphrase Kankri's words for both of the Vantas brothers' sakes. Karkat has to hear this from _him_ with the direct intention of reconciliation, not from a third party as details in a story.

Even so, Karkat's hands ball into fists on the table when you recount what the Uninfected man had said, and Nepeta places her own over his in some small attempt to calm him down. Her mouth is set in a thin line, though, so you know she's just as angry. Even Sollux, who's sitting in his chair at the corner of the room, surrounded by computer monitors, hisses.

The situation as a whole leaves a bad taste in your mouth—more so the second time than the first, because then you'd been worried more about Kankri than the implications of what had happened.

When you finish speaking, the room lapses into a tense quiet, broken only when John's phone beeps and he says, "They're here. Should we send them in?" Nepeta's grip on Karkat tightens for a moment before she lets go and sits up, and Karkat—along with everyone else—straightens, too. You think you might make quite a sight, all of you sitting at the far end of the long conference table with John at its head, serious and silent. Like a jury with your leader as both the judge and executioner. Discrimination isn't something any of you take lightly, especially given recent events. You're the only one who voices an affirmation to John's question.

John then nods to Sollux, who opens the door, and you must look even more intimidating than you already feel because both men standing in the doorway suddenly hesitate.

Karkat speaks first. "Well, are you going to come in or what? We don't have all day," he barks, and that gets them moving. They don't sit, and instead stand by the other end of the table as Sollux closes the door, glaring daggers at their backs.

(You note with a kind of sadistic internal satisfaction that the Uninfected's face is swollen, badly bruised around his jaw where Kankri had—for lack of a better word— _fucking decked_ him.)

John folds his hands on the table and leans forward, staring both down. "We were told you had some concerns. Who would like to start? We'll listen to both sides and come to a decision based on what we've heard." His voice doesn't hold an ounce of anger, though—rather, he sounds deceptively curious. Like he's playing with them, waiting for someone to say the wrong thing.

The Cured nods, still looking slightly frightened by all of you, but the Uninfected scoffs so low under his breath you almost miss it. Karkat, Nepeta, and Sollux don't, however, and even Jade and John's eyes narrow. Karkat bites out, "Why don't _you_ start, if you're so eager to make your opinion known." They glare at each other for a moment, but when the Uninfected starts to speak he only addresses John.

"I don't feel safe with these frea—" Sollux hisses quietly behind him and he backtracks, still glaring. "—with these _people_ near my home. Having them across camp living backwards lives is one thing, but sleeping in tents next to my family? It isn't right."

"And why, exactly, isn't it right?" John says, somehow still light despite the tension in his posture.

"Because they're monst—because they could kill us at any time." He waves a hand out, gesturing toward the man at his side who is openly glaring, now.

John, however, just grins _wide_ —a kind of smile that's somehow sharp and dangerous despite the fact that he doesn't have the razor-blade teeth four people in the room are sporting. "Couldn't the same be said for me, though?"

The room goes dead silent, and you swear you feel the temperature drop ten degrees. Because there's not a single hint of jest in his voice; he's completely serious. Completely, absolutely, _deadly_ serious. And you've seen him spar and fight enough to know that it's the truth. If he really wanted to, he could kill the man right here and now. In fact, anyone in here could, save for maybe you.

The man has enough sense to take a step back, sputtering a little. "Th-That's not what I meant."

"Really?" John asks, and then he stands, rising up to his full height and towering over everyone in the room, a kind of almighty figure with his impressive size and clearly-defined muscle. You think if you were outside, he might even block out the sun. "Then what _did_ you mean?" He's still smiling, and that makes the picture he creates even more terrifying.

"I just meant—" the man's voice is weaker, now, and you can almost physically see the conviction draining out of his body with every word. "They can't be controlled. They're time bombs, you know? They're fine now, but one day they're all going to snap and go on a rampage just like the things outside this place. It's the same thing, right? Just slower."

Karkat growls low in his throat before John can answer. "And where the fuck did you hear that?"

The Cured speaks up, then, stepping out to address him. "It's a rumor that's been going around, sir. I don't know for how long, but—"

"Shut up, I'm still talking," the Uninfected barks, but he barely has time to register that he's just made a serious mistake before Karkat slams his fists on the table and stands. He doesn't have quite the same figure as John, but you can all feel the rage rolling off him in waves.

"No," Karkat says, astoundingly calm. "I think you're done."

The Uninfected turns to John, though, and even though there's fear clear as day in his eyes he looks _pissed_. "When that happens, none of us are gonna be safe. You have _that one_ —" his gaze flicks to Karkat for a second "—on a _leash_ , but the what about the othe—"

What happens next is so fast you almost miss it, but the aftermath is chaos. Karkat roars, lunging for the man, but Nepeta grips his arms and holds him back. Everyone still in their chairs at the table, yourself included, stands as both Nepeta and Sollux hiss over Karkat's growls. Both men by the door step backwards, but the Uninfected trips and lands on his ass—he might have jumped at the noise and lost his balance trying to retreat. He starts shrieking from the floor, yelling that this only proves his point, while Karkat fights Nepeta and even Sollux looks ready to kill.

"That is _enough!_ " Suddenly John's voice thunders over it all, effectively silencing everything. Even Karkat freezes, but there's a dangerous noise still rumbling low in his throat. "You've made your case and we've heard you, like I said we would. Those rumors are _false_ , and with that in mind you have two choices: get along with your fellow human beings like a civilized person, or _get the fuck out_."

"What?" the Uninfected sputters, still on the ground. (A small, vindictive part of you hopes he's wet himself just so you can see him lose what little self-respect he has left, but you can't smell anything.)

"In six years, we haven't had to exile a single person, but that doesn't mean we can't start. Either you live in peace with us, or find somewhere else to go. This is _not_ a democracy, this is _survival_. Now get the hell out."

Without another word, the man stands and scrambles out of the room with what little dignity he has left and the fear of God on his heels. The Cured just stands there, shaking slightly, but you aren't sure whether it's out of terror or anger at the man's words. "Thank you, and thank you, sir," he says, addressing both John and Karkat in turn. John sits back down and nods to Karkat, who's started to calm down.

"I should thank _you_ for standing up for our people," Karkat replies. "Now that we know about this shit, we can actually do something about it. Go back if you want, we're done here."

The man nods, thanks him again, and then bolts as well.

Karkat stares as the door for a few moments, tense and poised like he's waiting for something, and it doesn't occur to you until after he's whirled on John that it might be the building's entrance closing. You don't have time to dwell on why, though, because as soon as he turns he's yelling. "What the _fuck_ , John? There's a _lie_ like that going around your camp and you had _no fucking clue?_ "

John runs a hand through his hair and suddenly looks lost, caving in a little, like all the strength he'd had moments ago just _left_ him like a slowly-leaking balloon and that was the only thing keeping him upright. "I didn't know—fuck, I had no idea."

"That's the fucking _point_ , asshole. Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?"

"Of course I do!" John shouts, and then, much quieter, he repeats himself. "Of course I do. I just—"

"You just _what?_ " Karkat hisses. "Spend all of your time in the goddamn Infirmary? Refuse to interact with anyone who isn't injured? Wallow in self-pity every waking moment so you _don't have time to pay attention to your fucking camp?_ " With every sentence, his voice rises until he's roaring at John, fists raised and spit flying everywhere. He's shaking—shaking with _rage_ —and though not once have you ever felt afraid of Karkat, you can't help but do so now.

Nepeta puts a hand on his forearm gently, and she's wearing an expression somewhere between concern and frustration. "Karkat, please."

"No, no—you don't get to _Karkat, please_ me. This is a really _fucking_ big deal, and I can't believe—I _can't fucking believe you had no idea, John!_ "

And, looking at John, you think _he_ can't believe it, either. He has his head in his hands so you can't see his face, but his whole body just _sags_ right before your eyes, sinking into the chair until he's practically curled up. "I know, Karkat. I know. I'll think of some way to fix this, I—"

"Do you even know _how long_ this has been going around?"

"...No."

Karkat just throws his hands up, then, and lets out a furious noise, like he's so livid he can't even think of anything else to say. You, Jade, and Sollux are frozen while Nepeta tries desperately to calm Karkat down. Both men are quickly falling apart, and whatever semblance of organization this committee may have had even just a few minutes ago has almost completely dissolved. But Karkat isn't finished yet.

"What kind of _leader_ ignores everyone to the point where one half of his fucking people become a  _potential danger_ to the other? If this rumor really is everywhere and there are enough morons who believe it, we could easily have some kind of fucking _revolt_ on our hands. A misguided _culling_ in the name of some false greater good. That's what _fear does_ , John, and _you let it get this fucking far!_ "

Suddenly, John's fists slam on the table, and the whole thing shakes. It's not the first time he's done that today, and as you see the bandages on his right wrist poking out from under his shirt sleeve you wonder if he's so hyped up on adrenaline he can't even feel pain anymore. Because his body is tense again and his jaw is set and he looks _pissed_ , now. Pissed and frustrated (and still, somehow, so lost). "I _didn't ask_ to be in charge!"

"Well that doesn't change the fact that you _are_ , so you might as well get your shit together and start acting like it! And if you can't, then _step down!_ " You feel your breath catch in your throat, shocked at what Karkat's implying. Looking at the two of them now—so close to mauling each other like animals—you would never know they had at one time been best friends. You came into the picture after they had already started to drift apart, but even that awkward separation was so, so much better than _this_. "Every decision you've made over the last _month_ has been a shitty one. Shitty and _really fucking selfish!_ And Jesus, John—Jesus fuck, you _can't even take care of your goddamn self!_ How can any of us expect to follow you with an _ounce_ of confidence when you spend every day passively committing suicide because you feel _guilty about surviving!_ "

Jade stands this time, pale and scared—so unlike the confident young woman who guides your friends and family out into danger too often—with wide eyes flicking back and forth between John and Karkat. "Stop!" She yells, high-pitched and frantic. "Stop saying that! It's just—what does he mean, John? _What does he mean?_ "

And you realize, then, that _Jade doesn't know_. She spends too much time away from camp on a regular basis—and even more recently she's been holed up and hiding from her cousins—to have seen John's downward spiral. You and Karkat and Kankri and the few other people who have been privy to John's borderline-masochistic self-sacrificing tendencies have always done your best to keep it under wraps out of respect (and, in some ways, denial—because if you don't talk about it, it isn't real) and Jade just has no idea.

John just looks at her, not sure what to say, but it turns out he doesn't have to.

Because in an instant, Karkat has him by the forearm in an iron grip, hauling him out of his chair without warning and—

John makes a kind of low, broken noise somewhere between a shout and a wail that just screams _pain, pain, pain_ and—

Karkat has his claws on John's back, gripping the fabric of his shirt with one hand and _pulling_ , tearing it off as he snarls so full of _rage_ and _sadness_ and—

Nepeta finally pulls him away, but it's too late. The world has stopped turning, completely still and silent and empty, as John stands there at the head of the table, and you can see it all. You can see _him_. And even though you knew—even though you _know_ —seeing it like _this_ is so, so much worse. His chest heaves, ragged breathing too loud in the silence, and his eyes are wide as he stares at Karkat. Betrayed, agonized, and heartbroken.

His shirt is completely shredded, most tattered strips already on the floor, leaving his bandaged, half-bleeding torso and destroyed back bared to the rest of you in the room. His right arm is wrapped from his palm to his elbow, but the skin peeking out from underneath is a sickening mixture of purple and green, bruised and swollen. And somehow, against the mess that is the rest of his scar-and-wound riddled body, the scratches on his face seem so much more fresh and red and mangled.

And you can see, then, that his skin is too pale, that his cheeks look sunken, and that the dark circles under his eyes are the same color as his right arm. That he's _broken_ , but by some miracle still alive, even though one look tells you that he might not want to be.

But as he stands there, torn apart and stabbed through the heart, bloody and destroyed on the inside and out, you can't help but feel a kind of quiet awe rise up in your chest. A kind of strange, unyielding admiration. Because even in so much pain he shouldn't be able to stand without passing out, he could still command the respect of a king, carry out the wrath of a god, and strike the fear of a devil in the hearts of everyone around him.

You'd watched him take the staple gun to his skin, you'd cleaned his gory back and heard him scream, and then you'd seen him walk out of the room to treat everyone else like nothing had happened in the first place. His strength, you know, is unparalleled. Unimaginable. Unattainable by anyone else.

(But strength, you think, means nothing if you're dead.)

Next to you, Jade makes a wet, wheezing, choking sound, and when you glance over you see that she's gone white as a sheet. Both hands are over her mouth like she's trying to stop herself from screaming, and her eyes are wide. You don't know if she's going to cry or throw up or pass out, and you wouldn't blame her even if she did all three.

Karkat breaks the silence, his voice low and dangerous. " _You_ pulled rank to go get the group from Laramie, _you_ made the decision to use the trucks—the one that led all of those fucking _things_ here—but when it comes to shit that really matters, shit for the greater good of the community, like—I don't know— _keeping track of gossip that could potentially tear this whole fucking place apart_ , you don't do shit. You can't take care of yourself, so how can we expect you to take care of anyone else?"

His words resound through the room, and you can almost physically see each one hit John like a bullet, like a knife. He stays standing, but as you watch, his spirit starts to crumble. And when he speaks, he sounds empty. "I thought I was doing so well, I thought I was doing better."

No one has anything to say to that, so silence descends a second time, blanketing the whole building. Even Karkat starts to deflate, having said (shouted) his piece, and eventually he sits down. He looks drained, too. (And when you glance over, you see that Jade—strong, confident, unyielding Jade—has started to weep.)

(You remember your thoughts about Dave, about how John needed someone to fight back, and now you regret them.)

Suddenly, Nepeta's head snaps up, and she sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. Sollux reacts less than a second later, hissing, " _Fuck!_ " as he dives for the closed door, pressing his body against it like there's a tsunami about to crash from the other side.

And then you hear her.

"Hello? Is anyone here? I'm sorry I'm late! I don't know why Rose and Jade didn't wake me up."

John goes completely still, and then his chest starts heaving like he's about to start hyperventilating. Or maybe he already has. "No, no, no—she can't—don't let her in, please don't let her in," he whispers, and for the first time in what feels like hours everyone in the room seems like they're on the same page.

(Because as much as most of you are angry with John, you know that this is between him and Karkat and _himself_ , and Jane can't see this.)

Without a word, Nepeta shoves Karkat down and strips off his sweater, tossing it to John. Karkat lets out a muffled squawk, but when she hisses, "This is half your fault, even if what you said was true. Deal with it," he goes quiet. It's a tight fit, but given that it was baggy on Karkat in the first place it covers what it needs to on John's massive frame. You bolt over while he's slipping it on to scoop up the shreds of his old shirt, rolling them in a tight ball as you then move like lightning toward Sollux's setup. You hear Jane knock on the door and know you don't have time to find the trashcan tucked behind it, so you just shove the whole bundle under the desk and hope (pray, pray, pray) that she doesn't notice.

"Hello? Is anyone in there?"

Jade scrubs at her face, and Nepeta whips around to John, smacking his leg from where she still has Karkat pinned to the floor. "Pull yourself together if you don't want her to know," she hisses, and it's like a switch flips in his brain. He immediately relaxes, the tension fades from his body, and an easy smile slides onto his face. It's fake—so, so fake—but you hope it will be enough. He nods to Sollux, who's still blocking the door, and he looks nervous but turns the knob anyway.

Jane blinks at all of you in surprise, one fist raised like she had been about to knock again, and lets out a weak, "Oh!" when the door opens. Her hair is disheveled like she's just woken up, and she's wearing a set of Roxy's clothes.

John chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, and looks down. (God, it's so fake.) "Sorry, Jane. We just finished. Rose wanted to let you sleep a little longer, and you really didn't miss much."

She blinks again, and then nods slowly. "Ah, okay." You wonder if she's even completely awake yet, because she sounds kind of dazed. "Roxy went over to the Cafeteria to get breakfast started, so I guess..."

"Head over if you'd like," you say, stepping in before John says or does something that will give him away, "or feel free to shower before you join us. I am on my way there now, so it's no problem at all."

She nods again, and then it seems to register that something is off in the room, because she frowns a little and glances between Nepeta and (the now half-naked) Karkat on the floor, and then at her brother. Before she can say anything, though, John interjects.

"Prankster's Gambit," he says with a grin, and then he flashes her an exaggerated wink. "I'm winning, now. Better keep up!"

Her expression shifts from confusion to indignation, and she huffs, cheeks puffing out like an aggravated chipmunk. "We'll see about that!" And with that, she turns and stalks off. This time, you listen carefully for the building's main door—with the room still open, you can actually hear it shut, and as soon as it does the entire room lets out one collective breath.

John sags again, and Karkat finally pushes up, Nepeta moving with him. Jade flops back down in her chair, and Sollux returns to his monitor setup with dragging feet. "I suppose," you say, suddenly feeling exhausted yourself, "we should follow through with the lies we just told and return to our daily activities."

A few heads nod solemnly in agreement, and after a hesitant pause everyone starts slowly returning to life. Jade and Nepeta choose to stay with Sollux in the Library for a little while longer as the rest of you leave, and John and Karkat head to the Infirmary as you make your way to the Cafeteria.

As you watch the backs of the two men ahead of you, you wonder for a moment if you should follow, just in case another argument breaks out. John and Dave hadn't left on friendly terms, either, and the three of them under the same roof could cause even more problems than you all already have.

But when the three of you step out into the sunlight and Karkat falters, hissing a little at the brightness, John puts an arm around his shoulders, guiding him, telling him to keep his eyes closed until he adjusts, and you think maybe you ought to give them a little more credit.

Because you know the story—you know how this all started. And at the end of the day, they are still brothers, after all.

* * *

Breakfast passes uneventfully, although it's a fraction busier than usual as those who might typically skip the meal join, wanting food before they set off to help with the Cured campground repairs. Jane and Roxy go about business as always, and aside from a few bemused questions about John's "prank" Jane doesn't seem to suspect that anything went awry at the meeting. You dodge her inquiries with various iterations of _I was sworn to secrecy_ and _it's better explained by the master himself_ , and after a while the subject drops. 

Kankri is in charge of lunch today so you won't see him until later, but you send him a message anyway, asking if he's alright. His reply is uncharacteristically brief, but he assures you that he's fine. You can't help but hope that he and Karkat have a chance to talk before yesterday's incident evanesces into the pool of what will likely become a much larger problem in the future.

When the last of the morning crowd finally shuffles out, you and the girls finish cleaning the dining room and then make your way toward the eastern field to help with the day's work. Although physical labor hasn't always been your strong suit, you know you'll be able to lend a hand where it's needed, and both Jane and Roxy are eager to do what they can. Almost everyone is already busy when you crest the central hill, and you can't help but pause for a moment to admire the progress that has been made in such a short amount of time.

The old water wall has been completely dismantled and cleared, and Equius, Horuss, and Jake are hard at work digging what looks like an impressive ditch to siphon off rain around the perimeter of the camp. Dirk and Nepeta are standing with them, talking heatedly about something, and the latter's presence has you looking for Jade in the crowd. You spot her at the edge of the forest, axe in hand, going at one of the fallen trees with an almost bloodthirsty vigor while two men help.

Karkat is a few feet away, now fully clothed and hauling a sizable log on his back, and to your surprise you see Dave trailing behind him with a load of his own. You'd gathered from the tail-end of his argument with John that he knows about Karkat's initial hesitancies regarding him and his brother, but both his reaction to the possible information leak and his behavior now are enough to tell you that he doesn't blame him in the slightest. You're curious about that, and about him. He hadn't struck you as much of a practical thinker before, especially given the circumstances of his departure from Houston. You make a mental note to chat with him again later.

(You don't see John anywhere, and that's both a relief and worry.)

Roxy and Jane call out to Dirk and Jake as soon as they spot the boys, and go rushing ahead of you down the hill. You shake your head, chuckling a little to yourself as Jake waves back, leaning his weight on the shovel in his hands and wiping sweat from his brow. Dirk looks a little stunned as both girls barrel straight for him.

Jane, never the most graceful of individuals, trips a few feet away, but before you have a chance to call out Dirk is next to her, catching her weight before it hits the ground. There's a brief moment where both of them freeze, and you're not sure who looks more surprised at how fast he'd moved.

Nepeta starts laughing so loud you can hear it from the top of the hill.

By the time you join them, Jake has made his way over and they're all chatting amiably, Nepeta clapping Dirk on the back while he tries his best to maintain some semblance of composure. "Quite impressive, Dirk!" Jake laughs, "I really thought she was going to take a tumble there!" Dirk shoves his hands into his pockets and looks away.

"It was nothing," he mumbles, and you can't help but raise your eyebrows a little bit at the flush creeping up the back of his neck. Interesting, you think with a small smile. Perhaps there was more than one reason why John had decided to consider his request to join the scouting group—and more than one reason why he'd asked in the first place. Nepeta flashes you a conspiratory grin, and you get the feeling you might be correct in your suspicions.

The light conversation continues for a short while, before Equius calls Jake back over to the ditch and Nepeta sends the rest of you off to work. Dirk stays behind and the two of them return to their previous discussion, while Jane and Roxy follow you in to the slowly-clearing carnage of what once was a thriving community. After a bit of weaving, you manage to track down Karkat and Dave, and ask the former what he would like the three of you to do.

(Dave avoids eye contact with everyone, you note, and skitters off with his pile of wrecked wood once it's clear he isn't the focus of attention. Jane and Roxy pointedly ignore him.)

You spent most of the early afternoon hauling rubble after that, you with your own bundle, Jane and Roxy not far behind carrying theirs together. Though hard, the work is somehow cathartic, and you're glad you can be a part of it after the particularly stressful start to the day.

Just as you're about to dump the last of your burden and return to the Cafeteria for lunch, however, your phone beeps—along with everyone else's in the general vicinity. You glance around and see the rest of the crowd sharing similar looks of confusion before pulling out your cell.

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board iimportant announcement2 

EB: hey, everyone!

EB: an important matter was brought to my attention this morning and i would like to address it with everyone as soon as possible.

EB: i've already spoken with karkat, and we'll be holding a joint meeting with both camps after dinner tonight.

EB: i know we haven't had one of these things in really long time, but attendance is mandatory and we will be taking roll.

EB: for those of you who have joined since our last conference, we'll gather on the central hill in the middle of campus.

EB: see you all tonight!

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW closed memo on board iimportant announcement2 

You blink at your phone, at a loss for words but already all too aware of what this is about. You hadn't expected John to act so quickly, but it stands to reason that something so urgent should be addressed as soon as possible. Jane and Roxy—as well as a few other people around you—ask if you know what's going on, but all you can do is tell them it's not your place to say.

(As you wrap up your work for the afternoon, though, you can't ignore the thick, heavy feeling of dread sitting like a rock in the pit of your stomach.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme song for this chapter is ["Mothers"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBRhg4V6bXU&index=5&list=PLZqsyBiYZFQ2_851hd0F6m3Hrh32stGS7) by Daughter. Remember to check out the [Freightstuck playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI) for more sick jams!
> 
> Another awesome thing everyone should take a look at: **[THIS AWESOME PIECE OF FANART](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/138037900057)** by tumblr user [youvegotnomeansforwanderlust](http://youvegotnomeansforwanderlust.tumblr.com/). It's of John, set during the flashback in chapter one, and it's _awesome_. A shoutout also goes to my editing team, [Tree](http://treeprince.tumblr.com/) and [Lucy](http://psuedopassionfruit.tumblr.com/), for proofreading this chapter. 
> 
> If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to hit me up on [my blog](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com), the [freightstuck](http://tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag on tumblr, or in the comments! You can also check out [this page](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/freightstuck_characters) on tumblr for more information about the characters, the Virus, etc. I will also be publishing a map of the compound that I've had drawn in my Freightstuck notebook since January 2013... once I figure out how to get it onto the computer. Thanks again for reading!!


	19. Pain Is A Compromise

 

**== > BE THE REVERSE MONSTROSITY**

Wow, that's a little harsh, you think. But it's kind of true, in a weird, sort of twisted way. Looking at the people around you gathering up the last bits of debris scattered in the Cured Camp, it's clear you don't really fit the mold. Most are like walking nighttime—grays and blacks and yellows, darkness incarnate—and you're... well, you're _not_. Maybe you're like the sun? No, you don't think that's right. The moon, then. Bright and white and just unstable enough to go through phases.

Whatever.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are DISTRACTED. Although, in your defense, there really isn't much to do but let your mind WANDER while you're stuck hauling wreckage. It's been several HOURS since your shitty MENTOR dragged you out here, and even though you may have been a little bit EXCITED for your second day of freedom, the feeling has mostly WORN OFF. Now, you're just kind of BORED.

At first, the whole thing had been an adventure in and of itself, and harder work than you'd anticipated. Like yesterday, it had taken some time for you to adjust to the crowds, the noise, and the physical labor—but _unlike_ yesterday, you now know what to do if you start feeling overwhelmed. Your muscles still ache like they're on fire and you can't carry as much as you think you should be able to (Karkat said they'd probably started to atrophy while you were unconscious for weeks, especially given how much weight you've lost) but you've slowly started to fall into some kind of rhythm, blanking out your brain and doing what you're told.

According to Karkat, lunch will be starting soon so you'll be able to take a break. You hadn't eaten much yesterday, but then again you hadn't done as much work and your meal schedule has been pretty fucked up lately, anyway. Now, though, you're _starving_. And it's making it hard to concentrate on _not_ concentrating.

Your phone buzzes.

It's some kind of mass message from John calling everyone to a meeting after dinner, and you're almost tempted to ask Karkat what's going on. You don't, though, because you've decided that you don't give a shit one way or another about what John does. Your argument had been the final straw, and now you're just done. You'll interact with him when you have to, but beyond that? _Adios, motherfucker_.

Not long after the memo goes out, Karkat tells you to dump your last load so the two of you can start heading back. He's easily moved twice as much crap, but doesn't seem particularly irritated at your slow pace. Irritated in general? Yeah. But for all his grumbling and cursing he's been pretty chill about the whole thing. You'd had to stop once, because you'd tried to carry too much too far, and instead of chewing you out he'd sat with you for a few minutes and taken half of your pile (along with his) without a word when you'd been ready to continue. He may be an asshole, but you really aren't one to talk. You're kind of a jerk, too.

When you're finally ready to go, you start moving with the crowd slowly shuffling across campus. You can practically feel the exhaustion in the air, but the (goddamn) sunlight seems to have lifted everyone's spirits somewhat. Lively, scattered conversation floats up around you, and even though you do your best not to listen you can't help but catch a few scraps. Most people, it seems, are wondering what the conference is about, and why John had called it so suddenly. Others are talking about food, about their homes, and about how they're going to rebuild—not in a sad way, you think, but with a kind of hopeful tenor. Not dwelling on what they've lost, but instead how they can improve things.

It's interesting. These people are strong, you think. They'll be fine.

You start heading toward the Infirmary out of habit, but then you spot Dirk through the crowd, walking side by side with a group of only half-familiar people as they all beeline for the Cafeteria and you hesitate. Karkat makes the decision for you.

"If you want to eat with the rest of us, feel free. It's not like we're going to kick your sorry ass out or anything, and you can always leave if you can't handle it." He shrugs, moving with the flow of human traffic toward the left, and you're just irked enough by his challenge to follow (even though you know he's right, know it probably wasn't meant to be an insult, and know this could be a huge mess).

The noise hits you like a brick wall, and the smell isn't much better.

Crowds outside are one thing, but in the bustling, busy Cafeteria everyone's voice is amplified as they talk and laugh and yell over one another just to be heard. The atmosphere is _joyous_ , and part of your brain wishes you could drink it in without feeling like you're going to explode. It's unlike anything you've been around in _years_.

There's also an overwhelming blanket of warm aromas floating out from the back of the building, covering everything with the scent of activated yeast and burning spices and a shitload of other things you can't identify because you're sure as hell not a chef. Not even close. The mob around you doesn't seem bothered, and you scan the throng (shakily) trying to find your brother.

Before you can, Karkat tugs on your forearm, pulling you along as he weaves through the tables and chairs and people, and you realize you must have stopped walking. He leads you over to a group in the corner of the massive room, and when you're still a few feet away you make out who's there. Dirk, Jake, the woman with long hair, Nepeta, and one of the tall men who'd been working with your brother are all seated, chatting amiably and completely unperturbed by the sheer quantity of _everything_ in this place. When she sees the two of you, Nepeta waves, and the tall man stands to steal two chairs from a nearby table.

"Hey!" Nep calls, and Karkat grunts back. He shoves his way next to her and plops his ass in the seat the big guy left behind, and she just laughs and turns to you. "Come on, don't be shy. Equius'll be back in a sec." You glance back to toward where he—Equius—is now standing, a chair in each hand, looking mildly annoyed at Karkat, and you finally put a face to the man who'd helped your brother. He isn't really what you'd expected, but then again no one here really fits any kind of stereotype.

You end up squished between Nepeta and Equius, and the conversation resumes like you'd never interrupted in the first place. You don't contribute anything both because you don't have anything to say and because you don't think you could if you wanted to (it's taking all of your energy not to freak out) so you just focus on listening to each individual voice at the table and nothing else.

Dirk doesn't say much either, but every now and then Jake—who's sitting next to him—will nudge him with an elbow and he'll mumble out a snarky comment or three. You can't figure out if his silence is because he's uncomfortable too, or because he just isn't one for words. He looks tense—nervous, even—but it's a sort of isolated, internal, well-muffled thing that you've never seen on him before. And he stiffens just a little every time Jake pokes him.

The woman, you learn, is Jade, and the final piece clicks together. She really _does_ look like the rest of her family, now that you know the connection, but for some reason she seems more reserved and quiet than the others you've met. And she's nothing like the woman you'd pictured behind the bright green text and excessive use of exclamation points. (You wonder, idly, if something happened, or if this is just how she is in real life.)

Eventually Jake perks up and cheers at something behind you, and everyone turns. Jane and Roxy emerge from the back room—the kitchens, maybe—and start making their way over to all of you with wide smiles, each carrying a massive tray of plates and food. Chaos suddenly descends on the whole building, worse than before if it's even possible, and within moments everyone is shouting hello to the two girls, telling them how great everything smells and how happy they are to see them and so much (too much) more. The cacophony rattles around in your head, and you feel like you're at a metal concert with the speakers just shy of blowing out or like you've turned your headphones up as loud as they can go or like someone has a megaphone, screaming in both of your ears and inside your skull.

You must look as panicked as you feel because Nepeta's hand finds its way under the table and over yours and she squeezes it. When you glance over, though, she isn't looking at you, and you're kind of grateful for that.

Jane and Roxy don't seem bothered by your presence, so strangely different from when you'd seen them out in the campground earlier this morning. You figure it's the atmosphere in the room, though—even you can admit once you've calmed down a little that the energy is contagious.

As soon as the girls leave you with your meals they disappear again and reemerge only moments later, distributing lunch with a kind of swift, practiced ease. More than a few people try to snag them for conversation, but they just laugh and thank them and tell them _maybe later_ and keep moving. It's actually sort of impressive.

You don't realize you've been watching them until you hear Karkat snap, "Hey, earth to Dave!" and you turn around to see everyone staring at you. You'd been working so hard to isolate your focus you'd accidentally started concentrating on the wrong thing. Whoops.

"You okay?" Nepeta asks, and she looks so concerned you actually consider leaving. But that would probably make things worse.

"Yeah," you mumble instead, and turn all of your attention to eating while the conversation starts up again. You don't even look at Dirk.

Then you hear something that almost makes you choke.

"So you're really joining us, mate?" Your brother hums in affirmation at the question, and Jake laughs. "Absolutely superb! You'll be an incredible addition out in the field once you get your strength back up to par, I have no doubt."

You glance up in time to see him clap Dirk on the back, and Dirk's eyes widen just a fraction, pushed forward a little by the blow he clearly wasn't expecting. He still has food in his mouth and immediately starts coughing, and Jake breaks into a round of boisterous apologies and awkward fretting.

But all you can do is blink, fork halfway to your mouth, and say, "What?" It's the first time you've spoken in twenty minutes, and suddenly all eyes are on you.

Nepeta lets out a drawn-out, quiet, "Oh..." next to you, but you don't take your eyes off your brother.

"You're leaving?" you bite out, and you can feel unwanted anger rising up in your chest too fast to keep the words from sounding more like an accusation than a question.

Dirk nods. "I'm going out on the next supply run in a week or so with Jake and his team."

"No, you're not," and your voice really _does_ come out like a growl.

Jake's eyes, bright and laughing just like the rest of him, suddenly go hard, and he glances from you to his cousin then back again. But Jade doesn't say anything, and if possible she looks even more sullen than before.

(You can feel your control slipping, you want to crash over the table and grip your brother by the shoulders, shake him, shout at him, scream that he _can't leave because he has to stay here where it's safe and you can't protect him out there what if something happens and—_ )

Nepeta's hand is gripping yours again and Karkat stands, and then you realize there's a low, dangerous noise rumbling in your throat. Even your brother looks a little wary.

"Outside, now," Karkat barks, and before you can do anything he's hauling you up by the back of your shirt, dragging you to the door. When they see the two of you, people move out of your way and conversations trail off, but the roar in your head is too loud for you to hear them well anyway. Because you're still looking at Dirk even as you're being manhandled through the crowd, still trying to convey with every fiber of your _being_ that this is _not okay_. You want to struggle, you want to yell and bite and claw something, because as soon as he's out of sight all you can see is him bloody and scared in the field outside Laramie. Hear his broken voice calling your name again and again as you fight, as the monsters swirl around you, death and carnage in their wake.

And then you're being thrown on the grass, hitting the ground _hard_ , and there's still that _sound_ coming out of your mouth that sounds so foreign and somehow too familiar, too frightening, and you almost— _almost_ —pause. But you don't, because any fear you have of yourself is completely overrun by the need to _hurt_ and _kill_ and _destroy_ anything that could ever touch your brother. That could ever cause him pain, even himself. Even his own shitty judgment.

"Get a grip," you hear Karkat's voice say, but you're too far gone, you think. Too far gone.

(Because you're still watching Dirk fight on loop in your head, still watching the Infected descend on both of you, but this time he doesn't get away—he goes down in a hail of blades and blood, screaming, screaming, screaming.)

You don't realize you've been moved again or that you're somewhat upright until the punch hits your face, and then you're back in the dirt. "What the _fuck_?" You snarl. The Cafeteria is far away, now, and the two of you are in an empty, grassy area next to a building you don't recognize. Karkat's standing over you, completely unfazed by your tone and looking tired and pissed and—

"You want to hit something, right? So hit me."

You blink at him, still kind of hazy and full of unfamiliar _rage_ and something howls in the back of your mind to _kill him, kill him, kill him!_ but you shove it down. (It's like trying to stop a flood with your bare hands, though, and it runs around your fingers and chokes you from the inside out, and you're drowning. God, you're drowning.)

"What?"

But his face then twists into a kind of malicious grin (that somehow looks so, so sad, you think, in a startling, fleeting moment of clarity) and he snarls, "We were all on board with the plan, but I was the one who supported it most. He's going out there no matter what you say. There's not a _single_ fucking thing you can do."

And then your vision goes _red_ and the whole world _stops_ and you _lunge_ at him, snarling and ready to rip his fucking head off his fucking shoulders and you watch, almost like you're somewhere far away, as the last shred of coherency you even think you might have had slips away, carried off by the damning tide in your head. You claw and bite and roar like an animal, like some inhuman _thing_ , and it hurts— _God, it hurts, everything hurts_ —but all you can hear is the chorus in your veins as your blood _sings_ , a hellish choir urging you to follow your instincts and _end him_ , end this _threat_.

He blocks your blows, redirects the claws you don't have ( _but feel like you should_ ) and shoves your head every time you try to snap at him with your teeth and kicks your gut and—

 _It's so fucking frustrating you can't land a single fucking hit and_ —

You kick, too, you think (but you can't really be sure because you know _anything_ right now; it's all hazy, black and red and _enraged_ ) and the impressive speed you'd had when you were a _human_ (because you're not a human anymore, you're something else; something worse) feels multiplied a thousand times, like you're the wind and the earth and the light itself, and you—

And then you're on the ground again, but you get up and dive for him, ready to _rip his fucking limbs off and bathe in his blood and—_

He punches your gut, knocking the wind out of you, but you don't stop _can't stop will never stop_ _not until he's dead_ and you go for his throat, pushing him into the dirt with a hand on each of his shoulders, but he uses both feet to flip you off and you go rolling over his head. You scramble up as fast as you can, but you can't see him anymore because you're _in the woods again, watching hundreds of monsters descend from every angle, growling and screeching and leaving death in their wake, tearing Dirk apart and you need to kill, kill, kill—_

Something—Karkat's fist, maybe—hits your temple _hard_ , and suddenly your back down and it's over. In an instant, he has one shoe pressed on your throat and the other foot pinning your left wrist to the ground, and the immediate lack of oxygen makes everything just _stop_. Or your body, at least. Your brain feels like it's still spinning out of control, like you're a bike hung up on racks and someone is running your wheels but you're not going anywhere, stuck in one spot and completely useless.

Everything starts to fade out because you can't get enough air and you think you might be dying. (It's different this time from the last, though. When you died before, you went out feeling numb and on fire all at once. Now there's just this dizzy buzzing all over your body.) And then the weight on your neck is gone and you gasp, ragged and broken, and cough for a small eternity. All the fight just _drains_ out of your system as you struggle to breathe, and you lay there wheezing and exhausted and in _pain_.

"Feel better?"

You squint up at Karkat, who's suddenly hard to see silhouetted against the bright sky, and rasp out a weak, "Fuck."

"Yeah." He nods a little, and then flops down on his back in the grass beside you, propped up on his elbows. There's blood on his neck, you realize, and his pants are torn. But he doesn't look at you—instead, he tilts his head back and stares up at the clouds as you listen to the sound of your own breathing. How long have you been out here? Ten minutes? Twenty? You don't know.

The world around you is quiet, too, and that's a kind of strange revelation. After the campground and the Cafeteria and the war in your head, the complete and total lack of noise is startling. A breeze rolls by, rustling through the trees, and that's when you take a moment to actually look at where you are. It's a torn up grassy field, sectioned off from the rest of the open space by a handmade two-bar wooden fence, and there's a forest bordering one side—the side you and Karkat are facing, now. You have no idea how you got here, but you're too tired to ask.

After a while Karkat turns to you (you're still heaving for air and the fucker doesn't even look winded, what the hell) and sighs. "Sorry, I had to."

"Sure," you wheeze. _Asshole._

He hums a little, low in the back of his throat, and then looks back up (and you don't know how he's doing that, because the sun is still really fucking bright). But when he speaks again, he sounds kind of quiet, like he's far away. You actually have to look at him to make sure he's still there and hasn't moved.

"When I first got myself fucked over, I almost killed John. I don't remember it, and he never told me, but Nep did. There were just a couple of us back then—me and her and Jane and Kankri and John's dad, all living in this shitty cabin in the middle of God knows where. The world was getting itself fucked in the ass around us, and me and Nep didn't know shit. She just—they came out of nowhere, and then _she_ came out of nowhere, and I thought she'd saved my goddamn ass. Except she didn't, because we were both dying before John even showed up. I'd driven across the whole fucking country to find him and Kankri, and got my ass kicked something like a hundred miles away. How fucked up is that?" He shakes his head and laughs, but there isn't any joy in the sound. It's just empty.

You don't say anything, so he continues.

"After that, there was just—there was _nothing_. We didn't have anyone to hold our fucking hands like you do, like everyone else here did. We were totally on our own out there, and—God—I wanted to die. I thought I _was_ dead. For a really long time. All I had was my name. We'd go out hunting at night and lose our fucking minds and it was _incredible_ but then we'd come back covered in blood and they'd look at us fucking _terrified_ and it was worse than anything in the world."

"Shit."

"Mhmm. You ever tasted blood, Dave? Like, killed something because you _wanted_ to, and not because you _had_ to?" He still isn't looking at you, but your shake your head anyway. He seems like he already knows your answer, though. "I have, and it's fucked up. It really messes with your head. It's like—it's like you're two fucking people, or something. Jekyll and Hyde or whatever the fuck. It took a really long time and a lot of shitty mistakes to get things straight, and I'm not the only one who has to deal with this shit. Some people have it worse than others, some people don't have it at all. John has some scientific bullshit to explain the whole thing, but it wouldn't help even if you knew. You forget who you are when you're Hyde, and sometimes you can't come back, so you just have to wear him out until he fucks off to his fucked up corner in your brain and wait. You've got to figure out how to cage him up, Dave, and let him out when you need him or not at all." He pauses and sighs. "Or you'll hurt someone you care about."

"You provoked me," you say, and you blink at him because _what the fuck_. You were ready to—you almost— "I could have killed you, asshole."

But Karkat snorts. "Nah, you're pretty fucking weak, even when you're out of your head. And by the time you're strong enough to land a decent hit, you won't lose it like that anymore."

You're about to snap back, but his words finally, _finally_ sink in.

_Or you'll hurt someone you care about._

Jesus—Jesus _fuck_ you'd almost gone for Dirk. _You'd almost gone for Dirk, God, God fuck. Oh, God._

Suddenly it feels like his foot is back on your throat even though you know it isn't because Karkat hasn't moved.

"Shit, oh shit," you croak.

And like he knows what you're thinking, Karkat says, "Yeah."

* * *

The two of you stay outside—on the Training Grounds, Karkat tells you—until you're able to stand without collapsing. If there were a word for something worse than exhausted, that's what you are, but Karkat doesn't seem surprised. Your injuries, though almost healed, still aren't completely gone, and you can feel the scar tissue tugging unnaturally every time you move.

Karkat's phone buzzes a few times while you pull yourself together, and he responds to the messages with steadily-increasing frustration as he waits. Once he's satisfied you aren't going to die on the spot, he asks if you want to go back to the Infirmary, but you shake your head. Even though you don't think you'll be able to work anymore at this point, you'd rather be anywhere but there. In a fleeting moment of concern (probably brought on by some completely stupid sense of camaraderie after he'd spilled his guts, or maybe just your own lapse in sanity) you ask if everything is alright, and he shrugs. "Jade needs something, don't get your panties in a twist."

"Wow, fuck you."

He rolls his eyes and stands, then, heading back toward the main buildings while you shakily make your way in the opposite direction. Surprisingly enough, he seems fine with letting you go on your own, but you suppose the crowds of people waiting back at the Cured campground will be enough to save you if you pass out.

The problem, however, is that you don't _actually_ know where you're going. You could probably get there from the Infirmary, but you have no idea where the Training Grounds are in relationship to that or the wreckage. You end up staggering for a while, listening for voices that could turn you toward your goal, but everything is still so maddeningly (blissfully) quiet there isn't much you can do.

So you end up standing in front of the sea.

Not a _real_ sea, exactly, but an ocean of graves.

It seems endless, rows and rows and _more_ rows of names and headstones and handmade markers. There are so many—so, so many—you almost forget to breathe, because the sight is somehow beautiful and tragic all at once. And it finally hits you that you're so goddamn lucky. Too lucky, almost. Because you still have your brother, and that could change too easily.

(Your brain decides to remind you that he's _leaving_ , then, but you shove that thought away.)

At first you think the place is empty, and—after a moment of consideration—you figure you've hit the end of the compound. There's forest behind the last string of death, and if you can along follow that, you'll eventually make it to the Cured grounds. But as you carefully—as respectfully as possible—start to pick your way towards the edge of the woods, you hear him.

His voice is barely more than a whisper, and you're still far enough away that if you were anyone else you might not be able to pick up on it in the first place. But it's there, _he's_ there, and before you can backtrack your brain zeroes in on the sound.

"I really fucked up, didn't I, Dad?"

And then, suddenly, you're frozen. He's sitting, facing the forest with his back against a tall, jagged stone, but even so much distance is too close. You don't want him to know you're here, you _shouldn't_ be here, but something stops you dead in your tracks.

Because you think, maybe, John is crying.

"God, this is so stupid. Everything is so stupid. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore... but, I mean, I guess I never really did." There's a pause, and then you here a kind of wet, choking sound you think might be laughter. Hollow, sad laughter like what Karkat had done when he'd talked about _his_ past. "I hope I made the right decision. You should be here. You would know. You'd be a better leader than I am, better than I ever could be. I know you wanted me to succeed, but there's just—I wasn't made for this. I care too much, I think, as dumb as it sounds. I want everyone to live even when we don't know what we're fighting for, anymore."

His voice cracks—breaking, crumbling as you listen, and you want to _run_.

" _I_ don't even know what I'm fighting for. What do we have left? Nothing, there's nothing left. And even though I know that—even though I _know_ that should fuck me up—sorry, mess me up—I don't feel _anything_. I don't feel anything, Dad. I'm empty. I don't get hungry, I don't feel cold when I'm outside or warm when Jane hugs me. Everyone needs me to be strong, but I can't, so I just have to fake it. I have to fake living. I don't want be alive anymore, but—God, Dad. I'm too tired to die."

He keeps repeating that one sentence over and over again, like a mantra, like a prayer, until his words are just wails and he's not even speaking anymore. And as you watch, he curls up—hands white-knuckled in his dark hair—shattering from the inside out.

( _That's fucking_ naive _, John. Don't talk to me about love and caring and that bullshit—you were just being a selfish prick_.)

You own words come back to you like a punch to the gut, a stab wound to the chest, and you feel your knees start to buckle. Because this is wrong—this is so, so wrong. _You_ were wrong, you think. At least halfway. But you don't know what to do because your body is shutting down and the work from the morning and your fight with Karkat and your fight with _John_ yesterday—all of it starts hitting you at once, suffocating you, crushing your entire being.

The last thing you see before you hit the dirt is John's startled face as he turns around.

* * *

When you wake up, you're in your room, lying flat on your back in your bed. It's not quite dark, but the light from your window is dim so you think you've probably been out for at least a few hours. You hurt all over and you're still tired; everything feels fuzzy, even the world around you, but one sharp sensation claws at your brain, most likely the reason you're awake now.

You're _really_ fucking hungry.

Without thinking, you sit up and try to swing your legs over the side of your mattress, but almost instantly your vision blurs and your head starts spinning, and it takes all of your willpower just to stay upright. " _Ugh._ "

Suddenly, there's a voice (too close) at your side. "Dave?" and you _jump_.

"Jesus fuck!" It's not a shriek. Definitely. You are Dave Motherfucking Strider and you _do not_ shriek.

(It's totally a shriek.)

Now thoroughly on the floor, you crack open your eyes and squint at the figure standing over you. He looks worried, and—to your all-consuming surprise— _normal_. You wonder, then, if you'd imagined the whole thing; if the graveyard had been a kind of delusion brought on by your exhausted brain.

Tentatively, John reaches out a hand to help you up. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fabulous," you reply, but he eyes you and you know he doesn't buy it.

"Mhmm, okay. Karkat told me you two got into a fight. I'd say not to do it again—you're not strong enough to maintain high-energy activity like that—but you've probably already figured that out by now." You avoid his hand (you don't need to touch it—you already know what it feels like, how hot it burns, because it's forever etched in your brain no matter how much you want the memory to disappear) and instead grip his forearm, and he hauls you into an unsteady standing position.

"You got it, Doc," you say, and he looks at you like you've grown a second head.

"Have you been talking to Rufioh?"

"Who the fuck is that?"

"...Never mind. Dinner has already started, so if you're feeling up to it I can bring you something."

Your stomach lets out a loud grumble just as you say, "God, _yes_ ," and John blinks at you for a second before practically _collapsing_ in laughter. It's loud and full-bodied and _joyful_ , and yeah—you must have hallucinated what happened. There's no way this is the same man. Absolutely no way.

(But after a moment he clutches at his chest and wheezes a little and there's a pained expression on his face that's too familiar and you think maybe, maybe—)

(But then it's gone.)

"Alright, I'll be right back. Get some rest okay?" He smiles and turns to go, and when you look at the back of his shirt you can see that it's covered in dirt.

You don't know what makes you say it, or even that you've said it at all until the words are out of your mouth, but just before he gets to the door you hear your own voice call out, "Actually, can I come with you?" And he stops.

"Dave, I don't think you should be moving around after passi—"

"I'm fine, really," you say, and he eyes you warily, like he's waiting for you to lose consciousness right then and there just to prove his point. You take a step forward instead, and (thankfully) stay upright.

He doesn't look completely convinced, but he sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose under his glasses. "Alright, alright. But if you die, it's your own fault."

"Noted."

You make it to the stairwell with little to no trouble, but the stairs themselves present a challenge. John ends up helping you half of the way down, mumbling, "This is a terrible idea, Dave," over and over again, but he doesn't try to drag you back to your room. By the time you make it outside, though, you're feeling steady and reenergized, albeit still incredibly sore.

When he opens the Cafeteria doors, the noise hits you the same way it did this morning, but this time you're prepared. He steps inside and you follow, and as the two of you skirt around the edge of the building toward the back (which is infinitely more effective than pushing through the middle like Karkat had earlier, you note) you spot the same table filled with the same people in the exact same spot as before. The only notable addition, of course, is Karkat. It's like some freaky _déjà vu_ , and you're suddenly reminded of how you'd almost strangled your brother.

You don't want to be here anymore.

John's still moving forward, though, and you want to be left behind even less, so you keep following, hoping the group doesn't notice you as you head for what you're assuming will be the back room. Everyone already has their food and the girls are nowhere to be seen, so that's the most likely place you'll find your own dinner.

Your luck runs out just before you turn the corner, when Karkat glances up and spots the two of you. "Well, shit. He's still alive." Nepeta smacks his arm.

"Yeah, sucks to be you," you snap back, and John snickers as the rest of them turn to see what the commotion is about.

Nepeta rolls her eyes and says, "Well _I'm_ glad you're okay."

"Good to know someone cares."

Dirk is looking at you, now, and his expression is—for once—unreadable, caught somewhere between concern and frustration and remorse, maybe. It's a weird combination, and you're not sure what to make of it. He doesn't say anything, though, even when Jake nudges his side.

John must pick up on your hesitation, because suddenly _he's_ poking _your_ arm. "If you want food, you have to get it yourself. You've made it this far so I'm not about to do the rest of the work for you," he huffs, but even though his voice sounds indignant there's worry in his eyes.

"Harsh," you say, although you're actually kind of grateful. "Lead the way, dude."

He throws a wave to the group and then turns, and you follow him around the corner. You discover you were right, the back room _does_ house the kitchens. Rose, Feferi, Jane, and Roxy are there, along with Kankri, who glances up when Feferi excitedly calls your name and—

You try not to snort. You really, really do.

But he's wearing an apron and has four clips in his black hair, holding it out of his eyes while he works over the stove, and it's just _too damn funny_ you can't help yourself.

" _What?_ " Kankri huffs in a kind of indignant tone, like some exhausted, insulted mother cooking dinner for her family, and one of her children has just said they don't _want_ what she's making and she's just responded _you'll eat what I cook_ and—and you think maybe in another life he would have made an incredible housewife.

But instead of all that, you stifle your chuckles and say, "Nothing," just as Fef tackles you in a hug.

" _Dave!_ " she says again, a little more forcefully now so you can't actually avoid her (not that you'd done it intentionally in the first place). You wonder how old she is, suddenly, because she's only a few inches taller than Roxy. But then again, she still has a little bit of height on Rose, and Rose is older than both of you.

"'Sup."

Rather than answering, she looks over her shoulder and glares at Roxy and Jane, and the two of them are frozen in place. For a moment, you're afraid they're both going to start yelling or ignore you altogether, but after a tense pause Roxy sighs, grins, and drags Jane over by the hand to join in. "Hey, Dave!" she laughs as Jane squawks, pulled against her will.

And then suddenly there are _three_ small girls clinging to you.

Rose has a sly smile on her face and you squint at her, but John is laughing again so you think, maybe, you can let it slide.

(But, just like in your room, he cuts off short with a grimace and her expression slips. She reaches over like she wants to help, like she wants to _do_ something, but he waves her off. And for a moment, you want to scream, even though you aren't sure why.)

Before anyone notices, though, she sighs and claps her hands once, getting the attention of everyone in the room. "Alright, ladies—I know you are happy to see him alive and well, but there are dishes to be done and I am quite sure the boys came for dinner despite nearly _missing_ it." She shoots John a dark look, and he just shrugs, smiling. "You are lucky we've become used to this habit of yours and have a few meals saved."

Roxy whines at her mother, but the three untangle themselves and get back to work as Rose bends down to open one of the many ovens in the room. With a towel over her hands, she pulls out two plates, and then passes both—and the towel—to John. Feferi appears at your side with sets of silverware.

"Thanks," you say, and she grins at you before bolting back to the sink.

Rose scolds John for a moment longer before shooing the two of you out of the kitchens because you're apparently a _distraction_ , and soon you're back out into the bustling throes of mealtime. Jade is the first to spot you this time, because she's facing the kitchens, but before she can say anything you shake your head a little. You've only spoken with her over Pesterchum, but you hope she gets the message.

You _still_ don't want to be here.

You don't want to be near _Dirk_.

She shoots a sharp look at John, then, who looks like he'd been about to speak, and then _he_ looks at you. You don't know what to say. Apparently she'd understood, but you don't know if—

But you don't get the chance, because Jake looks up at his cousin and follows her line of sight, and then he laughs, "Ah! I'm sure we can find a few chairs. If not, you're welcome to have mine, Dave. I heard your day was a bit rough."

Dirk suddenly looks tense, but doesn't say anything. Jake is sitting next to him, after all, and that means that _you_ would have to, too.

John just shakes his head. "It's kind of loud in here, I think we'll eat outside tonight."

"But you _never_ eat with us!" Nepeta whines, and she actually _pouts_. John, however, is unfazed, for which you're eternally grateful.

"Sorry, guys. Maybe next time."

"Promise?"

"Mhmm." He nods, and then looks at you, and yeah—he'd understood, too, you think, even if he doesn't know the full story. (Or maybe he does—everyone else is already aware of your fight with Karkat, so it stands to reason that he might have heard _why_ you'd fought in the first place.) When you finally make your way out of the building and sit on the grass—side by side, leaning against the outside wall in the sudden silence and welcome darkness—though, he turns to you and asks, "Is there a reason you're avoiding everyone?"

Instead of denying that you are, you deny that there's anything behind it, and say, "Nope," before shoving a fork-full of food in your mouth.

He raises an eyebrow and doesn't look away immediately, but as he's scooping up a bite of his own dinner he says, "Alright, but if you want to talk, I don't mind listening."

And you choke, because _Jesus_. The _last_ time the two of you had talked—really talked—you'd come pretty damn close to punching each other in the face. You'd said some really fucked up shit, and here he is, acting like it never happened. And he's been doing so ever since you woke up.

This time, it's your turn to look at _him_ like he has eight limbs, and instead of all the things you want to say ( _I don't mind listening either, I'm sorry, I fucked up_ ) you ask, "Who _are_ you?" the question surprises both of you.

"John Egbert, dumbass," he mumbles through a mouth of food, both eyebrows raised. "Who are _you_?"

"Dave Strider, asshole."

(But you think, maybe, the question had been the right one. It came out wrong, and the answer was technically correct, but you find yourself asking _Who are you, John Egbert?_ over and over again in the back of your mind.)

He doesn't mention finding you in the graveyard, or ask you how much you'd heard. He doesn't ask you anything, really—or tell you anything, either. The silence that follows is just that. Silence. It's strange and unfamiliar, but... comfortable.

And then, out of the blue, you realize this is the first time in six years you've been outside and night and not been afraid for your life.

You look up at the sky, meal forgotten, and just _stare_. You've seen the stars before, hundreds of times, but without fear and tension and _fear_ in your system, they look brighter, somehow. Or maybe you're just losing your mind.

"Hey, check it out! That's _Ursa Major_ ," John suddenly speaks up, and when you look over you see he's gazing upward, watching them too, pointing at a collection of dots in the white paint-splatter spread across the heavens.

"I know what the Big Dipper looks like. Everyone does," you huff, and he sticks his tongue out at you.

But when he turns back up, squinting through his glasses and somehow still so visible even in the darkness, you can't look away. And you want to believe it's because you're trying to figure him out, trying to find the answer to your own question, but you know that's a lie. Even though you don't really know _why_ it's a lie, you have this kind of deep, almost existential understanding that there's some other reason you'd rather watch him than the night sky.

(He's too strong for his own good, you think, and that fucks with your head a little because you never thought _that_ could ever be a thing. John Egbert is only a year older than you, but he's still somehow _ancient_.)

"There's _Libra_!" he exclaims, gesturing up again, and before he can catch you staring you follow his line of sight.

"I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to see."

"It looks like a house."

You scan the stars and think maybe you spot it, so you point, too. "There?"

"No, over there." He reaches over, then, and moves your arm slightly to the left, and there it is again—that strange kind of warmth, that all-consuming _focus_ —and just like his voice and his hand yesterday you can _feel everything about it all at once_ and without thinking, you jerk your arm away. He looks startled for a moment, almost hurt but not quite, and mumbles, "Sorry," before turning back to his food.

Fuck.

"No, uh. I'm just not used to people touching me, I think." _Fuck fuck fuck_. "It's weird."

But John just nods, and hums thoughtfully. "Yeah, my bad. Everyone has a little trouble with it at first." And then the bastard fucking _grins_ at you.

Silence falls again, and you can't help but feel like it's a little less comfortable than before. After a few more bites of your dinner, you ask, "Any other good ones up there?" and he hums again.

" _Lupus_ is over there," he waves his fork to the right.

"Like, the disease?"

"No, the wolf. It's upside down, though, which is kind of stupid." Then he looks at you again, and you look at him, but now all you can hear is _God, this is so stupid. Everything is so stupid_ in that broken fucking voice and you hate your brain, you hate it, because it needs to stop focusing on the wrong fucking things and be _normal_ again, damn it. "Are you sure you okay?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it, man. What else?" Anything else, you want him to say anything else but _stupid_.

He gives you that _face_ but turns skyward anyway, and after a moment says, "There's _Boo_."

"What?"

" _Boötes_ , the Bear Guard or the Plowman, depending on who you ask. It's over there next to _Ursa Major_."

"The Big Dipper, you mean."

"Definitely _Ursa Major_."

"Big Dipper."

" _Ursa Ma_ —no, no, I am _not_ doing this. We were having a moment and you ruined it, Dave," he huffs, rolling his eyes. But he's grinning again, so you think he isn't really all that upset.

"A moment?"

His smile disappears and he looks back up at the stars. "Mhmm," he hums. "This is the first time we've talked and you _haven't_ gotten angry, so it's definitely a moment."

You don't have anything to say to that. You want to tell him he's wrong, that you've totally had conversations like this before, but it's a lie. Even when you woke up to him sleeping on your floor four days ago, you'd been pissed at him. You hadn't yelled, but the feeling had been there, lurking in both you yourself and the air around you.

The third and final silence weighs ten thousand pounds, and doesn't end until you're both done with your meals. John collects your plates and disappears back inside the building, leaving you alone in the darkness.

* * *

 

When he reemerges, John is followed by the group from the table, and you realize that it's almost time for the big meeting everyone's been so worked up about all day. Karkat asks if you're going to help them set up or sit on your ass all night, and you choose the former because you're not too keen on waiting around for everyone _else_ to start leaving the building. You don't know how much you'll actually be able to do (your arms feel like they're made of tapioca pudding and your head is hurting again) but everyone, John and Dirk included, seems willing enough to let you tag along.

You end up following them into an unfamiliar building, one that apparently Dirk hasn't been in either because you hear Jake explain that it's the Cabinet, the compound's storage space and the old Arts College. From one of the farthest rooms on the first floor, he and Equius and Nepeta collect a set of _massive_ wooden poles with what looks like three label-free wine bottles wrapped to the top of each, and Karkat grabs a jug of something while Jade beelines for a bundle of thick, white rope. You, John, and Dirk just stand there for a second, until Jake asks John (with a strange, kind of confused expression) if he'd mind getting the podium, motioning with his head toward a long, handmade wooden platform maybe six feet in length and a good three feet tall.

John looks stricken for a second, but Jade just shoves her light load into his arms and hefts the thing over her head before anyone can argue.

As you exit the building, Jake gives Dirk one of the poles, leaving you the only one with your hands free.

Your group treks away from the main buildings, then, in what you think might be a southward direction until you come to a large grassy area that looks just like all of the _other_ large grassy areas in this whole fucking place. But Jade stops and sets down the platform, hopping on top of it and stomping it into the ground a little. She then sits down with her feet dangling off the sides, and Jake nudges Dirk along as everyone else moves towards her. Karkat passes up the jug and John the rope, and then John climbs up and sits next to her as she starts cutting the rope into small sections with a hunting knife.

"Anyone grab the flint and steel?" He calls, and Nepeta digs in one of her pockets and tosses him a small rock. He catches it easily with his left hand, but the second object she throws ends up in the grass behind the platform and he rolls his eyes. "Thanks. Dave—can you grab that for me? Little metal thing that looks like—I don't know—brass knuckles, maybe? And come help us with this when you find it."

You nod and circle around, scouring the ground until you see it. Surprisingly (or maybe not, at this point) it isn't that hard to spot even in the darkness.

By the time you pull yourself up onto the so-called podium, John is dipping the lengths of rope into the jug and stuffing each down into a wine bottle, leaving a little bit out from the stem. You don't really get what he's doing, though, until he takes the metal thing from you and strikes it against the rock in his hands directly over the string a few times. Eventually, it lights on fire, and oh. _Oh_. They're torches.

John shakes his right hand a little after he has the first three bottles—one whole torch—lit, and then he motions you over to sit next to him. "What do you want me to do?" you ask, because at this point you doubt you're just here for the company.

He hands you the flint and steel, and says, "Scrape them together quickly a few times until you get a spark. We've got a lot of these to do and I need to stuff the bottles." You nod, but he's kind of cradling his right hand in his lap so you don't think that's the main reason you've been passed this job.

Eventually, the three of you get into some kind of rhythm, and as you light each torch whoever has it in their hands wanders off to drive it into the ground a little ways away. Dirk has some trouble with his, but Jake jumps over to help him, and by the end of it all there are a little more than a dozen lined up in two rows, one on either side of the platform, going into the field ahead of you. The whole place is lit up now, and you're actually kind of impressed.

Just as Equius is pressing the last torch into the dirt, a thin stream of people starts to file from behind you, and the first few to arrive sit on the ground a little ways out from the platform. Karkat and Nepeta climb up with you, John, and Jade, and then John turns to you with a sheepish smile and says, "Sorry, Execs only. Snag a spot while you can, though—the others usually hang out over there." You nod, still not really sure what to expect from this whole thing, and hop down to see Equius, Dirk, and Jake already sitting down, front and center. You join them, and then you wait.

As the minutes pass, more and more people fill in the massive empty space behind you, and Roxy and Kankri press in next to Equius, followed by Terezi, who lights up like a Christmas tree when Dirk calls her name. It's strange to see her saunter over without a cane, deftly avoiding anyone who happens to cross her path. But she looks happy.

Rose and Jane follow closely behind, but Nepeta helps them both onto the platform so you figure they must be pretty important, too. You see a few faces you recognize in the crowd—Slick, the tall guy who could be Equius's twin, Feferi—but most (and holy shit there are a _ton_ of people) are completely unfamiliar to you, including the last person to climb up on the podium: a thin Cured man who hands an open laptop to Jade before joining them. You never spot Gamzee and Vriska, so you've either missed them or they aren't coming. The man who'd been crying in the hallway an eternity ago brings up the rear, pushing Tavros's wheelchair, and after a few minutes of dull murmuring and shuffling no one else shows up, so John stands.

Just like that, everyone goes silent.

And when John speaks, his voice is impossibly loud, crashing through the stillness with more volume than you've ever heard him use—ever heard _anyone_ use. But he isn't quite yelling, which is kind of crazy.

"You guys know the drill. If you have your phone, take it out and send a message to the attendance board. If you don't, have someone else send your username. You've got five minutes, and then we'll track down anyone who isn't here." The Cured man shifts his computer into his lap, and then the air around you is literally _buzzing_. It takes you a second to realize that it's the sound of hundreds of people tapping on their cells all at once. You have to physically resist the urge to cover your ears, and when you glance over you see that Terezi actually is.

After too long, the noise finally starts to die down, and John turns to the man with the laptop. A full minute passes before he gives a thumbs up, and John nods.

"Nice, everyone's here. That means we can get started." He pauses, letting his voice carry out over the crowd, and then continues. "There are two major things I'd like to address today, the first of which was brought to my attention this morning during an Executive Meeting. I would like to formally apologize to each and every one of you for missing something so huge, and especially so to the Cured." A few in the crowd shift, and a murmur starts up, but John raises a hand and it quiets down quickly. "There is a rumor going around that the Cured are succumbing to the Virus at a slower rate than normal, but will eventually contract the full range of symptoms. This is _absolutely false_."

People really _do_ start chattering then, but Karkat stands up next to John and says, just as loud. "It's been six years for Nepeta and I, and we're still just as human as the day it happened. We bleed red just like the rest of you." You see a few heads nod, and the muttering dies down a little.

Until a shout from behind you rises up, calling, "There's no way that's true! I mean, _look_ at them!" and that sets the whole thing off again. You see John scowl, and then like lightning he bends down and grabs something from Jade's side—the hunting knife.

"We would _not_ lie to you!" He yells, actually yells, and then in one fluid motion he brings the blade across his left arm and holds it out. He doesn't even blink.

A few people, Jane and Roxy included, shriek, and Jade jumps like she wants to stand but John waves her off and holds up his now-bleeding forearm. Then, without a word, he passes the knife to Karkat, who looks surprised but distinctly determined. He does exactly the same thing, and as you watch (mesmerized, too mesmerized, and thankful the breeze is blowing so you can't smell it) their blood drips down in tandem. The light of the torches casts an eerie glow over everything, but it reflects off the liquid and the message is clear.

It's the same.

(And everyone is silent, now, you realize.)

"We would not lie to you," John repeats. "If you have a problem with the Cured, let it be because you're a coward who can't accept that things have changed, and not because you put stock in petty gossip. We're all that we have, and we can't turn against each other like animals fighting for food. And if you don't like the way things are, you will be asked to find a new home."

There's a shift in the air, then. A kind of wave you can almost physically feel, and the rumble of the crowd starts again in full force. You glance back and see that most people are nodding, but a few look _pissed_. Someone to your left stands and yells, "You can't kick us out!" and suddenly John looks _deadly_.

"Yes," he says with so much conviction you think even the sky cracks, "we _can_."

(And you gaze up at him and you're _speechless_. Even your thoughts sort of halt. Because this is not the John Egbert from the graveyard. This isn't even John Egbert the doctor or the older brother or the friend. This is John Egbert the _leader_ , and at once you feel very, very small. Because for all of your talk in Houston, however long you'd helped your little group of misfits survive, you could never truly _command_. And even this is something one step beyond that.)

The congregation stills, and without another word the man sits back down.

There's another pause in the speech, and Karkat passes the knife back to John and returns to his spot next to Nepeta. He wipes it on his pants leg before handing it to Jade, and then John is once again the only one standing, a colossal figure towering over you all.

After a moment, he starts to speak again. "The second order of business was finalized this afternoon." On the podium, you see Rose and the thin Cured shift, turning to look at John with unchecked surprise. Karkat leans back a little, straightening up, and Nepeta's hand finds one of his. Then John takes a breath and says, "I will be temporarily stepping down as leader of this compound."

And the chaos that follows is almost unreal.

People start shouting, a few stand up, and Rose brings a hand to cover her mouth while Karkat closes his eyes. He doesn't look shocked—it's like a kind of quiet acceptance. At your side, Roxy shrieks, " _No!_ " and even Jake is on his feet. Jane grabs Rose's arm and looks up at her brother with an expression of sheer _betrayal_ on her face. And Jade doesn't move, but—like Karkat—she seems calm. She's frowning, but unlike almost everyone else she wasn't surprised.

(Even you aren't sure what to think, but then you can hear it again—his voice in the cemetery, confessing the false sins of ignorance and uncertainty to a silent grave.)

It takes a full ten minutes to get everyone under control again, and once the crowd is mostly calm John resumes. "As some of you who were in the Infirmary two days ago may already know, I sustained serious injuries during the storm." _God, the screams._ A few people shift, and you know they're thinking of it, too. "We have never once asked any of you to do your jobs when you can't—when you're sick or wounded or otherwise—and I ask that you extend the same courtesy to me, as well. I will be delegating my administrative duties to the Executive Committee, and Jade will be taking over _temporarily_ as head of our side of the camp. Kankri will be working closely with Tavros and I in the Infirmary to ensure that you all still have the best care possible, and I won't be leaving my position as head of the building. Until I feel that I'm able to provide for you all without compromising _your_ safety and _your_ health, however, I will be on a leave of absence from anything more than that."

John steps back, then, and Jade stands, announcing that she'll be staying in the compound until John is ready to take over again. Karkat speaks for the rest of the Committee by proclaiming they'll do their best to maintain order in the meantime, and shortly after everyone is dismissed.

While most people, Terezi included, start heading back to the main buildings, a sizable crowd moves toward the platform to speak with John and the others. Roxy rushes up to Jane and grabs the hand that isn't still holding onto Rose, but the rest of those you'd been sitting with hang back. Part of you wants to follow Roxy, to stand with them, but you know you don't belong up there. No matter how many friends in high places you've made over the last few weeks, you're still just an outsider.

You hear Jake turn to Equius and ask, "Why would he _do_ that?" but the only answer he gets is the same reason John gave. He looks borderline panicked, and suddenly the sheer _gravity_ of what's just happened hits you. The foundation of this place, the thing that holds it all together, is crumbling. (Except no, you think—it, _he_ had already been broken, and probably has been for a long time.)

Eventually, Nepeta hops down and waves the rest of you over to help put out the torches and clean everything up, and by the time you make it back to the Infirmary it's late and you're too exhausted to move. You're still in your clothes from this morning when you fall asleep, head swimming and body aching. And when you dream, it's all oranges and grays—fire and death and terror, early mornings and sunrises and hope. 

* * *

**[6/14/37]**

John doesn't come to wake you the next morning, so when you finally open your eyes you're almost blinded by the bright sunlight streaming through your (still uncovered) window. You feel disgusting, grimy and somehow still too tired, and you idly wonder if you should ask for new sheets when you get the chance. They haven't been changed since... well, you don't even know. Your phone is under your pillow, so you roll over and pull it out, squishing half of your face into the soft fabric as you check the time.

It's almost noon, and you have over a dozen messages from Karkat.

Immediately, you bolt up, frantically stripping and fumbling for clean (or at least mostly clean, anyway) clothes. You've already missed half a day's work, and you're pretty sure your mentor isn't going to let that slide. Halfway down the stairs you realize the building is already empty, and by the time you hit the landing you've come up with at least eight different excuses for sleeping in. You should start setting an alarm, you think. Maybe you'll just claim you already had one and ended up dozing through it.

You almost mow down Vriska on the first floor in your mad dash to the main entrance.

By some miracle, she manages to skitter back a few steps just as you come to a screeching, stumbling halt inches away from taking her to the ground, and for a second you just stand there, blinking at each other.

"Holy shit, _Dave?_ "

She looks pale, more so than usual, and even behind her glasses you can see that there are dark circles under her eyes. Her long hair, something she's always taken care of no matter how shitty your surroundings, looks thin and scraggly, like it hasn't been brushed in days, and she's lost weight, too. You suddenly wonder if she's been eating, because according to Terezi she was never passed out for days like the rest of you.

"Yo," you say, and wave a little. Her eyes are wide and she's staring at you, mouth slightly open, like she doesn't quite recognize who you are.

"You look..." she hesitates, then her gaze flickers around you in the empty hallway, and suddenly she's wringing her hands. This isn't the woman who'd fought you every step of the way in Houston and beyond, you realize. She's scared of something, of _you_ , and even though you've never really been friends you can't help but think that's _not_ okay.

"Sick as hell?" you flash her a smile, trying to keep the mood light—trying to tell her it's _still you_ , but she eyes you warily anyway.

"No," she shakes her head. "Just sick."

You frown. "Ouch, don't bruise my fragile ego like that, Serket. You aren't doing much better either." It's harsh, but apparently that's the right thing to say because her shifting gaze sharpens and she actually _glares_ at you, and for a moment you see a brief flash of _Vriska_.

"I'm _fine_ ," she bites out, and you raise an eyebrow at her.

"Then why are you sneaking around when no one's here?"

She doesn't reply immediately, but now she's back to looking like something is going to jump out and attack her at any second and you want to kick yourself. Shit, you aren't good at this. "I'm looking for John," she says after a moment, and even though you _know_ she's trying to keep her voice level she fails miserably.

"Hate to break it to you, but he's probably already gone for the day. We're trying to get the—" and then suddenly, you stop yourself, because some of the things Terezi had told you start to click and you think that mentioning the Cured Camp probably isn't the best idea. "We're trying to get some stuff fixed and he's been out helping the last couple of days." You think, anyway. You'd mostly been trying to avoid him yesterday morning, so you're not sure if he was actually there or not.

She caves in a little at the news. "Oh. He didn't reply to my messages so I thought he might be busy, but he's usually here so..." Her gaze flicks to John's closed doorway and then to the hallway behind you and then to her hands, like she doesn't want to look at you anymore. "I'll just head back, then."

This is so _wrong_ —so wrong you can practically taste something bitter in your mouth, because as much as you don't like Vriska you don't want to see her like _this_. You want her to snap at you, argue with you, tell you how dumb you are over and over again until you rise to the bait and fight back. You want her to be _normal_ , or at least better than _this_. So you say, "I can send him back if I see him, or I can try to do whatever you need him for." She looks a little startled, and you realize a second too late that you're being _nice_ to her. _Eugh_.

But to your surprise, she actually answers. "I was going to ask him for something to help me sleep."

You frown. "Hm, yeah. Can't really do anything about that, sorry. But I'll pass the message along." You nod, and she finally looks at you, and it's so full of uncharacteristic _relief_ you want to scream. But you don't, because that would probably be bad, so instead you say the first thing that comes to mind without really thinking about what you're asking. "Have you been outside at all?"

And then that panicked look is back and you mentally facepalm because no, of course she hasn't—she's afraid of everything that moves. Predictably, she shakes her head. "Not since we got here."

You're waist deep in this shit, though, so you keep going because—really—it isn't a _terrible_ idea. "The fresh air might do you some good. Everyone is probably on the other side of campus by now, so it should be pretty deserted." You think for a second she might tell you to fuck off, or run away, or start _shaking_ (because she's tugging at her hair now with one hand, the other white-knuckled around her wrist like she's trying to hold it steady) but instead of doing any of that she nods. "Cool. We don't have to go far or anything, just out the door."

You start walking toward the main entrance, and don't check back over your shoulder to see if she's following you because that really would cross the line between _mild_ concern and pity. And you have a little more respect for her than that, even if you'll never, never, _never_ admit it. Even so, when you open the main entrance she's a few steps behind. The light is twice as lethal as it was in your room and you have to pause, squinting as your eyes struggle to adjust, but she must just think you're waiting for her because she comes to a stop next to you and doesn't say anything about it.

When you glance over, finally able to see, she looks like she's about to pass out.

And that would be really bad, you think, so you sit down in the grass and lean against the side of the building—just like you had last night outside the Cafeteria with John—and pat the spot next to you. It takes some coaxing to get her to relax at least a little, but eventually she does, despite the fact that her knees are pulled up to her chest and she's curled up over them and her shoulders are stiff as a board. She closes her eyes, though, and you take that as a good sign.

Maybe.

You really have no idea what you're doing.

The two of you sit in silence for a while, enjoying the quiet and the light breeze floating around you. It's a really nice day, actually. You're not cold—although you don't think that's any accurate indication of the temperature—but she doesn't comment on it, so you assume it's fine. You hope Karkat isn't too pissed, but at this point you're already really fucking late so it doesn't matter how much longer you stay.

Eventually, she mumbles, "This isn't bad," and you can't help but grin a little because _fuck yes_ , go Dave Strider, and then your brain registers just how fucking _tired_ she sounds. Like, not physically tired—although clearly she hasn't been sleeping well—but, like, _existentially_ tired. And you've never really heard that tone in her voice before.

"It's pretty nice here," you reply. "Fucking light years better than Houston. Good food, decent people, the whole nine yards."

She hums a quiet, "Mhmm," in response, and you're almost afraid that's the end of the conversation. You think getting her to talk would help, but you also don't really want to push her beyond what she's comfortable with. It's a weird feeling, and you wonder if all this _safety_ and _comfort_ is messing with your head the same way your new body is fucking with your senses. (And you realize with a kind of startling clarity, then, that you're _calm_ for the first time in _weeks_. You don't know if it's because of the atmosphere or the fact that you're talking with someone _familiar_ , but you don't really feel like questioning it. You're just kind of grateful. Really, really grateful.) After a moment she says, "I think Terezi hates me," and the uncertainty in her voice sounds so foreign you just kind of blink for a second.

"Nah, I don't think she could. Y'all are best friends, right? Basically sisters or whatever, even way before this whole place went to shit. Only difference is that you don't have to look out for her ass anymore, 'cause she's doing just fine on her own."

And then she actually _laughs_. It's not the same malicious cackle you're used to—it's kind of soft, more like a chuckle—but it's easy, unforced. Good shit.

"She's probably going to watch _my_ back from now on."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing, though."

She hums. "Yeah, maybe not."

The two of you go quiet again, just sitting there in the sun. No one shows up, so you wonder if that means you've already missed lunch or less time has passed than you think, and it occurs to you then that Vriska probably shouldn't be outside when everyone starts piling into the Cafeteria next-door. When you look over to ask if she wants to head back inside, though, she's got her face in her arms, still folded over her knees, and there's a slow, gentle rise and fall of her back as she breathes. She looks... calm. And it takes you a moment to realize she's fallen asleep.

Maybe you're a little _too_ good.

You sigh, shifting your weight, and resign yourself to sticking around for a little while longer. You can't leave her here, but you also don't want to wake her up, so you pull your phone out and idly surf the frozen internet for a while. Karkat messages you twice more over the next hour, but you ignore him.

Sometime around one, however, the door to the Infirmary opens from the inside, and you jerk up, hoping the noise doesn't wake Vriska and honestly a little caught off guard. You'd thought the building was relatively empty, although thinking back that was probably a really stupid assumption. You haven't seen Gamzee in weeks, and you don't think Tavros would be out helping the repairs.

But when a head of disheveled black hair pokes out into the sunlight, squinting around, you're even _more_ surprised, if that's possible.

John is wearing a pair of flannel, drawstring pants and a loose t-shirt that doesn't cover the bandages on both his arms—the left one is new, you think, probably from the cut he'd given himself last night—and has a blanket over his shoulders. There's a mug of something in his hands, and his glasses are kind of crooked, and he's blinking around like he's just woken up. He doesn't see the two of you at first, but when he does his eyes widen a little at the sight of Vriska.

"Good morning," he whispers, so you think he must realize she's out like a light.

Before you can answer, he shuffles over (barefoot, you notice) until he's sitting on the ground next to you. He looks... relaxed. And rumpled. And tired, but not _exhausted_. You almost don't recognize him.

"Dude, it's, like, one in the afternoon," you hiss back as quietly as you can.

He blinks at you, and then shrugs. "Wow, I don't think I've slept that long in years." He doesn't seem particularly concerned about it, though, and stares out at the space between the Infirmary and Cafeteria with a kind of loose smile on his face as he takes a sip of whatever drink he's brought with him. But then he turns to you with an eyebrow raised and asks, "Wait, shouldn't you be with Karkat?"

"Probably."

He hums, then glances around you to Vriska. "I'll tell him you were with me, don't worry about it. If you want to go, though, I can keep an eye on her." Then he hands the mug to you (it's tea, you think) and stands, one hand on the building for support before he's totally upright (maybe he really isn't awake yet), draping his blanket over her back. She doesn't stir.

When he's next to you again, you return the tea and shrug. "Maybe in a little bit."

He smiles at you again, leans his head back against the building, and closes his eyes. And this, you think, is nice. The quiet, the breeze, the sun; Vriska dozing next to you and John humming softly after a while, and yeah. Yeah.

This is _good_.

(Because this is the recovery process, you think. The beginning of a shift toward better things, toward stability and health and happiness. You'd arrived just in time to see an empire fall, but you'll be here to witness the birth of a new one.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme song for this chapter is ["Misguided Ghosts"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGWeHPK3NC4) by Paramore. Follow the Freightstuck [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI) or check out the new John-centric [8tracks playlist](http://8tracks.com/pyknicginger/john-freight) for more sick jams. 
> 
> Tumblr user [bren-blogs](http://bren-blogs.tumblr.com/) drew two amazing fanarts of chapter 18: [THIS ONE](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/138700692652) of Karkat and Nepeta, and [THIS ONE](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/138700738022) of John. Please go check them out! They're awesome!
> 
> Special thanks to [Lucy](http://psuedopassionfruit.tumblr.com/) and [Tree](http://treeprince.tumblr.com/) for proofreading this chapter, and thank all of you for reading! As always, it really means so much to me!! If you have any questions or want to show me anything, hit me up on my [blog](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/) or in the [freightstuck](http://tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag. Have a wonderful day! <3


	20. Invisible Machinery

 

**[6/19/37]**

**== > BE THE BURNED-OUT SCIENTIST**

You sigh—chin resting on crossed arms as you hunch over onto the countertop, ass in your desk chair—and practically _will_ the little thermocycler in front of you to work faster. It's night, although you're not sure exactly how late, and the only light in your room is a soft glow from a few scattered lamps shoved wherever they can fit on the crowded surfaces of your desk, lab table, bookshelf, and counter. Admittedly, it isn't much, but thanks to your poor sleeping habits you've long since gotten used to the dim atmosphere—although your already-iffy eyesight hates you for that.

Aside from the whirring of the device on your countertop, the Infirmary is almost completely silent. Most of your temporary residents have started to move out as repairs on the Cured campground move toward the reconstruction stage. It will be a while before everything is back to normal, you think, but the speed at which the work has been progressing is nothing less than incredible, spurred on even more in the last few days as those who had initially been wary of helping began to hesitantly lend a hand. One proclamation from you and Karkat hadn't fixed things overnight—you'd known that would be the case—but it had been a start, and that's all you could ask for.

For a moment, you rub your eyes under your glasses with one hand, and then sigh again, reluctantly resigning yourself to an uncomfortably long wait. You debate whether or not you should pass the time reading, but decide against it after a quick glance around your office. There's nothing here that you particularly _want_ to spend the next two hours perusing, no matter how helpful it may or may not be to what you're trying to accomplish. As interesting as scientific journals and medical texts and catalogued graduate papers are, even you have your limits, surprisingly enough. So you end up folding up your glasses and setting them aside before burying your face in your arms, hopeful that the quiet hum of machinery will lull you enough for a short nap.

The decision is small, largely inconsequential, and likely no one will ever know about it but you—but in so many ways, it's the definitive mark of a greater shift. Because six days ago, you would have never willingly chosen sleep over work, even if it were just a review of some old article on HIV tropism. You can't help the feeling of guilt that wells up in your gut, but you push it back down and force yourself to relax. _This is what I'm supposed to do_ , you think. The internal reassurance doesn't help as much as you'd like it to.

Thankfully, your body is far more exhausted than your mind, and you don't even realize you've dozed off until you hear the door to your room open slowly, like the person behind it is doing their best to stay quiet. It doesn't wake you up completely and you don't budge an inch, but through a sort of half-asleep haze you listen as muffled footsteps make their way over to your side. They pause for a moment, and then there's the distinct rustling of fabric and you feel something gently fall across your shoulders.

The person goes quiet, then, and you don't hear them leave.

Just as the white noise of the machine and the sudden warmth across your back starts to soothe you into unconsciousness again, the whirring stops, and the stark, immediate silence is enough to fully wake you up this time. You shift, and whoever is still next to you sighs.

It takes a moment for you to actually pick your head up, but when you do you see a blurry blue light flashing on the device, indicating that its finished the last cycle of its process. Your arms are both stiff and dead, each aching in their own way as your somewhat-healed injuries protest at being lain on for so long, but you will them to move and reach for your glasses.

Karkat is leaning with his back against the counter next to you, arms crossed, watching you carefully as you blink up at him.

"It's almost three in the morning, John. Go to bed," he says softly, frowning a little.

You sit up, wincing as your back cracks and the scabbing wounds tug on your skin when you move, and shake your head slightly. "One more gel. Let me run one more gel," you mumble, a little annoyed at how rough your voice sounds. The blanket Karkat had draped across you starts to slide off, but you pull the corners closer around your body before it can.

Karkat sighs again and runs a hand through his dark hair. In the dim light, he looks like a living shadow, you think. A creature of the night, built perfectly to blend in with his now-natural environment. "Everything will be here tomorrow," he replies, "do it then."

You want to argue—to tell him that's one more day of waiting when you could be focused on something that could _help_ everyone, working toward some kind of solution—but the tired look he gives you leaves no real room for debate. A week ago you would have pressed the issue, but now you don't have the energy or will to do so. Instead, you just hum kind of low in your throat, resigned. "How did you even know I was up?" you ask instead.

"I saw the lamps in your window on my way to lunch. Stepping down was supposed to be good for you, you know. Now you just have the free time to run yourself into the damn ground doing other things." His voice is still hushed, and he doesn't sound particularly angry. Just worn out, maybe. Almost defeated.

You stretch, ignoring the tug on your injuries again, and shake your head. "I'm not running myself into the ground," you reply. "I'm prioritizing. I've spent too long focused on the present—on everything happening _now_ —and I haven't had the chance to think about the future. But now I do. And with the Striders, I actually have the first lead in years. I can't let that chance slip away."

He stands up straighter and reaches over to shut the thermocycler off, huffing. "They're not going anywhere—or at least Dave isn't. What are you even trying to do?" You see him glance around the room, gaze lingering on the dozen or so used agar palettes laid out carefully across your table on strips of wax paper. All of them have three identical striped bars embedded in the gel, and each are marked with a series of numbers and letters.

You rub your eyes. "We know the Virus works like HIV—it's a single-strand _retroviridae_ that embeds itself into the host's DNA, altering it permanently. What I'm trying to figure out is _where_ that is, and why the Striders presented different symptoms."

Karkat raises an eyebrow, turning back to you. "I thought you said it was because the shit mutated?"

"I said that was a _possibility_. It was a theory brought up in the heat of the moment when Dirk was vomiting and we were all losing our minds; it doesn't even really make any sense. Natural selection occurs because one thing has some advantage over another. That's the whole _point_ of evolution. XDR-TB became a problem two decades ago because we couldn't kill it, but there's no advantage for the Virus in Dave and Dirk. They retained coherency, they're aesthetically maladapted to dark environments despite the physical changes in their ocular system, and they aren't contagious—if they were, I'd be dead by now."

"It could be a fluke or some shit. Not all mutations are advantageous to the species. That's how natural selection works—some stick, some don't and die out."

"But think about it—what are the chances that two biologically related individuals who were injured in two separate places at two separate times would be infected with the same altered strain? And what about Terezi? She was hurt at the same spot Dave was, but she still progressed normally. _That_ doesn't make any sense _either_."

He hums, frowning deeper. "It's statistically improbable—like, the chances are really fucking slim—but it's not exactly _impossible_ , I guess."

"Maybe, but it's just too much of a coincidence. This is _science_ , Karkat. There's always a reason, and I can't rely on a guess with no real basis in research. It's more likely that there's something different about the Striders themselves, not the Virus."

Both of Karkat's eyebrows shoot up, and he glances back at your table. "A genomic anomaly."

"Exactly."

"So you're using up your limited resources on PCR with random primer sets to look for it. Do you have any idea how fucking ridiculous that sounds?"

You shrug and roll your chair back a little before standing, and crack your lower back. The injury on your side burns. "Yeah, but it's the best lead I've had in years, Karkat. It has to be there."

He shakes his head. "What are you even going to do if you find it? What the hell would that accomplish?"

"I don't know," you sigh, tugging the blanket closer around your shoulders. "But if I can find it, there might be away to use the information."

Karkat looks at you like you've grown a four extra arms, and you can't exactly blame him. "Like what, some kind of treatment? That's—there's no fucking way that would work. If it's even a _thing_ , it's in their fucking genome, and the only way to do anything with that—short of breeding a whole new branch of the goddamn human race with those assholes as the damn studs—would be gene therapy. This is the fucking _apocalypse_ , John."

"I have to do _something_ ," you reply, willing him to understand. It's a long shot, and you'll probably run out of supplies before anything comes out of the whole thing—it had taken almost a decade to track down the HIV sequence using a similar method, and you don't have that kind of time—but you can't just let the opportunity to at least learn more about what you're up against slip by when you have a chance to research it. That's not who you are, and that's not the kind of person you _want_ to be.

Karkat doesn't respond immediately. Instead he sighs again—what feels like the eightieth time he's done so since he walked in—and starts heading for the doorway. Before leaving, though, he pauses for a moment and looks over his shoulder with one hand on the handle, and says, "Go to bed, John," in that same quiet, beaten tone. And then, without waiting for you to say anything, he's closes the door behind him.

In the silence he leaves in his wake, you gaze out over the organized chaos of your lab. This is progress. This is _progress_ for the first time in _years_ , and you need him to get that. But you know full well that you've long since shot yourself in the foot.

Everyone, you think—even you—has given up hope after so much time. That lack of faith in yourself had almost brought you to an early grave by your own hand, and you're all too aware of that. The feeling won't go away quickly or easily, and you know you'll always have an intrinsic doubt in your abilities, in your worth, in your value—but this is _something_. This is something you'd been too blind to see, trapped in your own bubble of self-hatred and denial, and now that you _have_ seen it you're not going to let it go. You're going to cling to it, grip it white-knuckled like a life raft in a tsunami, because you think right now it might be the only thing keeping you afloat. The intervention of your friends and family—of _Karkat_ —had given you a second chance, and you won't waste it. You _can't_.

As you curl up on your pile of blankets, settling in for the last few hours of darkness, you try not to think about what might happen if you fail.

* * *

You don't sleep particularly well, and wake just before dawn feeling groggy and vaguely nauseous. Your body still isn't used to so much rest, and even though you know it's for your own good you can't help but resent the time you spend unconscious. It will be a while, you think, before you can get a normal night's worth without greeting the day afterward with a sense of stomach-churning guilt and unease. When you'd collapsed for nearly sixteen hours following your temporary resignation, you hadn't been able to sleep for two days straight—forty-eight hours—and since then you feel like every day is an uphill battle.

You'd hoped you would be able to sleep until breakfast, but a quick glance at your phone tells you it's still far too early for that. Morning training likely hasn't even started yet, so you're left staring blankly at the blurry ceiling of your office, trying to will your body back into oblivion. Predictably, you stay awake.

After a short while you give up and instead try to quell the inherent feeling of _wrongness_ running through your veins. It's a strange, indescribable sensation—not sickness, really, but a kind of all-consuming gross, dizzying, physical manifestation of the internal battle you've been waging for the last week. It takes a few minutes for you to get your limbs moving, and the antithetical missions of your body and brain only serve to drive home the sense of disgust and confusion clouding your thoughts. You want to stay down and never move again, and you want to work and work and _work_ until you pass out.

You choose neither (finally, after so many years), aware that nothing good could come from giving in to either side of the paradox.

Sluggish and mildly ill, you gather up a towel, change of clothes, and your soap caddy before trudging out of your room and into the cool morning air. It serves to wake you up some, and the open space of the campus grounds feels oddly liberating after the confines of the Infirmary, but you don't really start to feel _better_ until you've made your way into the free-standing bathroom building just south of the dorms and beelined for the showers on the men's side. The hot water is scalding, enough to turn your skin red and raw, but you relish in the sharp sensation as it runs into your very core, burning away the fog in your head. Your healing wounds sting and itch in the spray, irritated by the temperature and rough treatment, but you ignore them and just stand there, blanketed by steam and fire as you lean your back against the wet tile and let your shaggy, soaked hair drip into your closed eyes.

It's cathartic, in a way, and when the water finally starts to cool down you finish washing your hair and body, cleaning the injuries you're able to reach as carefully as you can.  By the time you make it back outside, you feel refreshed, shirtless but pants changed and your damp towel slung lazily across your shoulders. Because you'd unbandaged your torso and arms to shower, you opt to go without a shirt to avoid bothering your plethora of wounds until you can re-cover them in your room. It's still early enough that no one will be up and about to see you—that silent, calm time just after most of the Cured settle down to sleep but before the Uninfected start their mornings. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, now, and for once you actually feel prepared to take on the day.

When you get back to your office, however, Dave is sitting underneath your window, eyes closed and head leaning back against the glass. His legs are somehow crossed even in the cramped chair, and he has a steaming mug of something cupped between both hands. Although this has become a regular habit of his over the past few days, you can't help but blink a little when you see him, slightly startled.

Without opening his eyes, he says, "'Sup," the moment you pause in your doorway.

You sigh and shake your head, closing the door behind you as the temporary surprise wears off. "You know this is _my_ room, right?" you huff, a little bemused at the fact that he's lazing around so casually. It's strange to think that you'd spent so long fighting each other, but now there's a kind of calm security in his presence. Even if he _is_ an annoying asshole.

"I like your windows. It's easier to focus here," he hums, still perfectly still as you make your way over to the cabinets above your counters and begin collecting the gauze and disinfectant you'll need to bandage yourself. You don't know whether his reasons for continually spending free moments in your room are genuine or if the whole thing is just an excuse to bother you—you're not in his head—but you can't deny that your office does get the most light and natural warmth in the whole building. Unlike those in most of the other old, repurposed offices, classrooms, and labs in the Infirmary, your windows span almost the entire length of the far wall and rise up a few feet from the floor to just under the ceiling. At one time, you think, this may have been a lab specifically for botany and plant studies, because even similarly laid-out rooms don't have the same feature. Although the windows hadn't been the reason you'd chosen this room as your base of operations, they are a welcome perk.

As you toss your towel in your sink and begin re-wrapping your right arm, you shrug. "Suit yourself, dude."

No matter how strange the new habit might be, if he finds it easier to meditate here than anywhere else there's not much you can do about it. You're well aware that he's been having a difficult time adjusting, and you're not about to kick him out just because it's technically your space. If sitting there helps him, you'll put up with the company, and in truth don't actually mind it as much as you had when he'd first started spending time here.  On early mornings like this, he doesn't say much, and if he comes back in the afternoons and evenings during breaks during and after his work, he'll either listen to music quietly or idly chat with you while you do your own thing. It's strange to see him so calm, but you're not complaining. And it's nice to have someone around who won't scold you every thirty seconds.

Just as you finish bandaging your other arm—even after almost a week, the deep gash you'd given yourself at the conference is still red and scabbing, so you now have a matching set of gauze on both forearms—you hear him shift. "Your back looks better," he says, and you glance around to see that he's watching you, now. He takes a sip from his mug with both eyebrows raised.

You sigh and turn around, leaning the small of your back against your counter as you set to work on your midsection. You'd been able to remove the staples a few days ago after the wound finally sealed itself shut, but it's still the worst one. "Thanks, I guess. Not much I can do about it but wait. I'm going to have some pretty impressive scars once all of this heals, though," you reply. Without thinking, one of your hands reaches up to brush the scratches on your cheek—the only wounds you have that are anywhere near recovered, despite the fact that they're still pink and raised—and Dave glances away. "Could be worse, though."

He just nods mutely.

When you finish your midsection and start wrapping your torso, however, you can't hold in the small hiss of pain when you try to reach around and pass the roll of bandages from one hand to the other behind your back. Bending your shoulders around to do so pulls on the cuts and the wound on your side, both still raw from your shower, and you almost drop the gauze. Without a word, Dave stands and sets his mug aside before making his way over even as you meekly try to convince him that you're fine, really, you're _fine_. He doesn't listen, though, and instead gently tugs you away from the counter, taking the bandages from your hands.

He finishes wrapping your back and torso with a kind of soft, practiced ease that makes you wonder just how many injuries he'd had to treat with basic first aid back in Houston, and when he finally rips the gauze and hands you the end to secure in place with a metal clip you thank him quietly, defeated and a little resigned to the fact that no, maybe you can't do everything on your own. (The thought leaves a slightly bitter taste in your mouth, and you wonder if you should raid the Cafeteria for a cup of tea to wash it down.) He waves you off and returns to your chair, mumbling, "It's the least I can do, dude."

You don't like how guilty he sounds when he says it, but you just frown and don't comment. You don't know what you could say, anyway.

Now thoroughly wrapped, you slip a clean shirt on and run your hands through your damp hair, ready to settle in for another morning of work. You pick up where you'd left off the night before, mixing a tray of gel for the samples you'd spun while half-asleep, and Dave doesn't seem to mind the noise even as you do your best not to disturb him. After a while, you notice that he's started watching you again, following your movements with a kind of muffled, poorly-concealed curiosity.

At one point, you steal his mug to take a sip, only to blanch a little when you realize it's coffee. He just snorts, chugging the rest as soon as you hand it back to him like your reaction had been a challenge. You roll your eyes and turn back to your work, mumbling, "That's nasty." (You're grinning, though. It's a nice feeling.)

When the samples from last night yield no results, you huff and lay the used electrophoresis palette with the others on your table before starting anew. It's just after seven in the morning, now, and although the commotion of the day isn't in full swing there are a few people milling around outside. Dave motions to someone through the window, and you glance out to see Roxy and Jane wave back, likely on their way to the Cafeteria to start breakfast.

An hour later, you're sitting at your desk with your feet up, reading through an old academic journal as you wait for the thermocycler to finish doing its thing. You think Dave might be dozing, but it's kind of hard to tell. He has a pair of headphones on and his eyes are closed, still in the same spot but now with his head resting on one arm of the chair and his legs draped over the other. Without his keen hearing to let you know someone is approaching, you're startled when there's a sudden, sharp knock on your door. You'd been lulled into peacefulness by the hum of the machine and Dave's quiet breathing, and you can't help but jolt a little as Dave sits up, too. When you open the door, however, your eyes go wide and you usher the young man inside.

Jake is bare-chested, holding his shirt over a bleeding scrape on his right arm, and the moment he sees you he lets loose a stream of apologies that you just wave off as you sit him down in your desk chair. "What happened?" you ask, taking the fabric from his hands to inspect the wound. It's not deep, and likely won't take more than a few days to fully heal, if even that. Even so, it looks rough, and there are bits of splintered wood in the flesh that will definitely hurt like a bitch to remove.

He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, glancing over at Dave who's now pulled his headphones out and is listening as well. "I took a tumble during training, not too severe but enough to send me right smack into the fence. I would've kept going, but Nep vehemently insisted that I come see you just to get patched up."

You nod and stand, tossing the bloody cloth into your sink with your towel from this morning, and retrieve a pair of tweezers,  a small bottle of alcohol, and a hand towel. "Smart move. You're leaving in just under a week, and if you let something like this go it could compromise your ability to perform. Save the stubbornness for Jade and out there in the field," you say as you crouch down next to him and begin picking out the splinters. He winces a little, nodding, effectively scolded. A moment more passes and he doesn't say anything, so you ask, "Aside from all this, at least, how are things going?"

He thinks for a bit, grimacing again as you pull a particularly large sliver of wood from his arm, and then says, "All in all, not bad. Dirk's doing quite well, all things considered. His fisticuff skills still leave something to be desired, but he's gained a wallop of confidence since you gave him the—what does he call it?—the katana."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Dave nod a little to himself, satisfied with the answer. Dirk has been working with the rest of the scouting team during morning training, now, for several days, but he'd had something of a rocky start. You and Dave had gone out to watch him on his first morning, and although you'd been impressed with his speed and incredible ability to dodge almost anything, he had only landed one offensive hit. You'd been worried it was because he wasn't physically capable of doing so, but while his strength may still have been sub-par (comparatively), Dave had idly mused that his inability to attack might be due more so to the fact that in Houston, they had relied solely on weapons to get by.

It had made sense, and wasn't really a problem you'd ever considered. From the beginning, you and yours had been (and still are) brawlers—you survive by any means necessary, be it tools or your own fists. Your people could go a little wilder than the group from Texas because they _knew_ there would be help waiting to treat whatever injuries they got, and—if something did go very, very wrong—there would even be a chance they could still come out of it alive by your hand. Cured. But in Houston? There was no medical help, and if someone went down even once they were done for. To minimize risks, then, they would have had to rely on distancing themselves from the danger and escaping as soon as possible. They didn't fight to stand their ground, but rather to live another day.

That kind of ingrained survival sense isn't something a person can overcome in a few days, you think, so rather than try to force it out of him Nepeta had suggested you give him the tools to improve upon what he already knew. After some debate and several trips to the Armory, Dave had helped the two of you pick out a Japanese sword stolen from a collection in Bellevue. It had been used before, but given that you had very few sword-fighters in your ranks, its former owner had died during a raid due to inexperience and your own inability to foresee the problem that would cause. Dirk had promised to care for it, to respect it and use it to the best of his ability, and after watching him run through a few individual exercises you'd been confident enough in his skills to let him take it permanently.

In the days since, he's rapidly improved, although he still has yet to win a single sparring match. His tenacity and ability to adapt, however, have made up for that, and Nepeta has been continually assuring you that—barring unforeseen circumstances—he'll be ready to leave when the time comes.

Dave has yet to make an active appearance on the Training Grounds, but then again his own internal damage had been much worse than Dirk's. Given how long he'd been unconscious and the full extent of his wounds, both external and internal, it will likely be a while before he's able to participate. For now, you have him doing a set of mild exercises every day to build his strength back up, and to your surprise he's managed to follow the schedule fairly consistently. You don't know whether it's because he just wants to get back in shape, though, or because he has some ulterior motive driving him forward. You haven't asked, because he hasn't really pried into what's going on in _your_ head, and you owe him for that.

"That's good to hear," you respond, picking the last few splinters and then pouring some of the alcohol on the hand towel you'd picked up. "This is going to sting a little, sorry." When you start gently patting the injury, Jake hisses, but again doesn't comment. You can't help but feel a little proud—even though it's a minor wound, nothing to be worked up about, your cousin is handling his treatment remarkably well. He'll do fine out in the field, you think. "What about the others?"

Jake hums a little, like he's trying to distract himself from the pain. "Meenah had the upper hand in our match when I left, although I'd be loathe to ever admit that to her. Terezi has been quite impressive in recent days, as well—although that could be due somewhat in part to the exclusivity of her partnership with Dirk during practice. As for the rest—Rufioh, Slick, and Eridan—they've been just about as well as always. It's been quite some time since Rufioh returned from his last mission, so he's more than gotten used to his new body. The man's gung-ho for another round out in the field, and I can't say I blame him."

"Good, good," you nod. When you finally get his wound clean, you start bandaging it tightly, and this time Jake doesn't even flinch. The whole area is probably numb by now, so far past burning he likely can't even feel it. "You're lucky this wasn't deep. Try to keep it clean and it should heal just fine on its own in a few days. But," you look at him seriously, then, "if it gets any worse, this could pull you from the mission. The smallest things can mean life or death out there, Jake."

He nods solemnly back, all traces of usual joviality gone from his expression. "I know," he says. And you _know_ he knows, but that won't stop you from saying it as often as you have to.

* * *

Jade doesn't look up when you walk into the Armory.

She has her back turned toward the door, curled up in a folding chair at one of the long tables reserved for gun maintenance, surrounded on all sides by papers and worn manila folders and at least four pencils, from what you can see—two of which are broken in half. Her long, wild hair, usually half-tamed in some semblance of an unkempt bun, is hanging loose, frizzing out around her in a way that's off-putting, even if you aren't sure why. Maybe it's because she looks just as much a mess as the area around her, or maybe it's because, right now, her dark mane is the only thing that's remotely free.

(You wonder, then, if that's how you look to people—trapped. It's not something you'd ever wish on Jade, on the most independent, unrestricted person you've ever known, but this is your fault. You'd asked her to take your job for a while, to help you carry the burden that was only ever supposed to be yours to bear, and that makes you ache. This is the cost of your own freedom, and you hate it.)

You don't even know if she's awake or not, that's how still she is. It's dark, now, just after dinner. She hadn't shown, so in some strange twist Jane had sent you to go look for her. It had been something of a wild goose chase, checking the tent she shares with Jake and the Greenhouse and at least two other places she could be, and you think maybe you should have started here because _here_ is something like a sanctuary for her, second only to the river. Here, surrounded by weapons, this pinnacle of both defense and offense. Of strength. This odd mirror reflecting everything she is, you think.

You don't talk much anymore, though, so you can't really be sure. The two of you have interacted more in the last week than what feels like months, but there's still a kind of lingering disconnect you can't help but feel. You wonder if she feels it too.

She's not asleep, you realize when you get close enough to stand next to her amid the carnage. Her arms are wrapped around her legs, which are curled against her chest, and she's just staring off into space, eyes unfocused on the rack of knives along the opposite wall. Even as you wait there in silence, hesitating because you _don't know what to do_ , she doesn't budge.

And then, after a long moment, she sighs.

"I didn't realize it at the time, but I think I used to resent you," she says quietly, without turning to look at you. Her voice is rough, like she hasn't used it in a while or she's been crying or both, and you want to hug the _shit_ out of her. But you don't, of course. Even if you don't _know_ Jade, you know her, and you know she would take that as some kind of pity, and she would hate it.

"For sending Jake out?" you ask instead, just as softly, and after a second or two of deliberation you sit down on the cold floor next to her and lean against one leg of the table. She's above you, now, in the chair.

She shakes her head a little, still staring straight ahead. "No. Well, yeah, but that's not it. For a lot of things, I guess. But mostly for being irreplaceable."

You frown, not understanding what she means or where this is coming from. The last you'd heard from her, two days ago now, she'd been yelling at you about your ridiculous filing system (which is _not_ ridiculous at _all_ and is, in fact, flawless), every bit as ornery and defiant as always. Things had been, if not normal, slowly getting _back_ to normal. Jade is a punch first, ask questions later kind of person. Introspection is so unlike her and your worry spikes again—your worry and guilt, because if it's the job that's making her think like this, if it's the weight of it all, then it really _is_ your fault.

"I'm not—you're not—" you fumble for an answer, for the right thing to say. She just shakes her head again.

"You're right, you're not. And neither am I. None of us are irreplaceable. It's all fucked, we're all just people, the whole world can go to shit and reset itself and we'd all die and _it wouldn't matter_ ," she replies, and her voice breaks halfway through when she starts spitting out her words. She sounds like she's about to sob but also not, like this is just the aftermath of something bigger that you missed.

You reach out to touch her, maybe to hold her hand or to _actually_ hug her this time, but you stop with your arm halfway raised when she turns suddenly, sharply, to stare at you right in the face. And she looks _pissed_ and _miserable_ and _lost_ , and it's a look you've never seen on her before. "What happened?" you ask softly, startled.

Then she throws her hands up and _yells_ , sweeping her arms across the table and shoving papers everywhere, off the surface and onto the floor, sending dozens of handwritten documents fluttering everywhere. You jump at the noise and action and the heavy _thud_ that resounds down the table leg you're leaning against, yelping a little. But she's still roaring, loud and cracked. "What happened? What _happened?_ John, _everything fucking happened_. You almost _died_ because you couldn't take care of your goddamn self and I didn't do _anything about it!_ I'm supposed to be this—I'm supposed to be the person who _protects everyone!_ " She's standing, now, chair toppled behind her as she bears down on you from above, hands waving everywhere all at once—pulling her hair, fisting through the air, digging into her shirt, and gesturing wildly at your face. "But I _can't_ protect everyone! I've taken over half of _your_ job and Tavros is in the Infirmary doing the rest and Nepeta and Jake have _mine_. I'm just sitting here doing paperwork!"

You sit there on the floor, half on your back because you'd started leaning away from her as she'd advanced, staring up at your cousin while her chest heaves and she screams herself raw. And when she's done, she sort of collapses to her knees, hitting the concrete hard enough to probably hurt but not making any sort of indication that she even felt the pain.

And then you really _do_ pull her into your arms, sort of. She's draped across your legs, totally limp, and she's still not crying, just sort of shaking and furious. But she doesn't resist as much as you'd expected. "I'm sorry," you say. "I'm sorry, Jade. I'm sorry." And you hold her. And you hold her. And you hold her.

"I'm just a fish in a basket. I'm just a dying fish in a basket," she sort of moans after a while, and then she laughs without any humor. "I thought that was a good thing because it meant I had a purpose, but I don't know what I'm good for anymore."

Immediately, you pull her upright slightly so she's almost sitting in your lap, tucking her head under your chin (and ignoring the way it pulls on your wounds and the stinging pain when her elbow digs into your side), because there's no way she's comfortable sprawled out halfway on the floor. It's a strange position, something you haven't done to anyone but Jane in years, and even then it's been a while. But you need to do _something_ —to comfort her somehow, and this is the only way you can think of.

(This is Rose's area of expertise, you think, still mildly panicking. Maybe you should message her? But you also don't really want to do anything for fear of having Jade shut down again. This, you think, has been a long time coming. And she's related to you, and you know yourself, and you know—now, at least; now that it's been made _startlingly_ clear to you by everyone else—that you bottle things up until the whole mess ruptures like a really impressive emotional hydrogen bomb.)

Jade snorts at something, the position maybe.

"Last time I checked, you had two arms and legs, and fish don't have those," you say. You don't really know what she's talking about, but you sort of understand.

The statement gets another dry chuckle from her, and you count that as a small victory.

"Some fish do. Like frogs," she mumbles.

"Frogs are amphibians, they don't count."

She hums, maybe frowning based on the tenor of the sound, but you can't see her face so you can't be sure. "Axolotls?"

"I think those are amphibians, too."

" _Crap_."

And you chuckle, then, without really meaning to. She sounds so put out by the fact that amphibians technically aren't fish that you can't help it, but you catch yourself before it turns into real laughter and cut off the sound. She's totally silent, and you're suddenly worried that you've upset her, because laughing at someone during what could possibly considered a break down isn't exactly a good thing. "You do have a purpose," you say after a long moment. "And you're still protecting people. That's why you agreed, right? So you could protect me?"

She snorts again. "Yeah, protect you from yourself."

"See?"

"...I guess." She sounds hesitant, though, like there's still something left unsaid. The thought occurs to you, then, how strange this is—this whole thing. How familiar it all sounds, like you're talking to yourself. But instead of sitting on one end, on the messed up end where everything is hopeless and nothing makes sense, you're on the side of reassurance. And you start aching anew.

You pull Jade closer.

You regret asking her to take your place, even for a little while. This is why you hadn't wanted to leave. Because the job—the whole thing, the _responsibility_ —will fuck anyone up. You hadn't noticed Jade was going through her own thing, just like you hadn't noticed the goddamn _rumor_ , and leading half the base even temporarily is something she doesn't need on top of that. And you vocalize the thought—or the second part of it, at least. "I'm doing so much better," you say, trying to sound as confident and convincing as possible. "I'd planned to step back up after a few weeks, but—"

"No, no," she shakes her head. "It's fine. I guess I just didn't really see it like that. I've got to—there's the fucking Harley Curse an—I guess I just thought I wasn't fighting it if I wasn't out there. But we're all still fighting, even if we're doing different things." She sounds uncertain, almost, which is a strange tone that you're not used to hearing. Because Jade is _always_ certain. (But, you think, even the strongest people have moments of self-doubt.)

At the mention of your Grandma's ridiculous saying, though, you can't help but tense a little bit. Because it's _stupid_. You don't believe in Bad Juju or luck or anything like that—you believe in science and facts. And not Jade or anyone else had anything to do with all the _death_. Death is just death, you think. It's a natural thing that happens, whether it's gross and bloody or quiet in the night. You could find people to blame if you tried, and if there's anyone you want to pin it all on it's Caliborn, not Jade. Never Jade.

"We're all still fighting," you confirm quietly, voice tight. "And we'll never stop. Because if we stop, we lose."

( _I want everyone to live even when we don't know what we're fighting for anymore_.)

And that's it, you think. It's not an answer, really, or a startling revelation. It's just a step.

You're not fighting toward something, really—not some singular end goal or the resolution of a major conflict or anything like that. You're just struggling so you can live, moving forward to _not lose_. You're doing it so you can see another day, spend another moment with your families, laugh one more time with your friends. You're doing it so you can celebrate victories and mourn losses, watch the sunsets and the sunrises, look at the stars and eat good meals and _exist_.

And that, you think, is okay. It's as good a reason as any. It's the _best_ reason. The only reason that matters.

You're not fine, and you don't know if you'll ever be. But no one else is fine, either.

"Game over," Jade says, sounding very, very small.

You don't realize you've started rocking until Jade's hands fist tighter in your shirt, but you don't stop. It's nice, you think, in some strange way. The quiet room, the dim light from the standing lamps, the darkness outside, and Jade's warm weight on your chest (that you can feel, _God_ , _you can feel it! You're alive!_ ). "Game over. We could all die and the world would keep going without us in it, but it wouldn't be the same," you say, and now you really do feel like you're talking to yourself. "So we're not replaceable, actually. Everyone needs everyone else. Everything's fucked, yeah, and if that didn't mess you up a little then you wouldn't be human. You'd be—I don't know—a plant. Or a fish." (Jade chokes out a small chuckle at that.) "But it's okay to be human, and to feel things, and to question yourself. It's proof that you're _alive_."

Jade doesn't respond immediately, but then again you don't think she has to.

Some small eternity later, she stands and stretches, and she flashes you a grin that's relaxed and grateful and apologetic all at once, and she starts picking up the papers now strewn on the floor. You help her, quietly, without a word, and when she sits back down in her chair and you pull up one next to her, she doesn't complain. Instead, she just huffs and says, "Your filing system really _is_ shit, you know."

* * *

Two days later, Tavros declares Gamzee clean enough to start integrating him into the camp, and the day after that Vriska finally sits down with Terezi to talk to her in person without having an episode for the first time since her arrival. Progress on the Cured campground moves steadily forward, and as more homes are reconstructed people start moving out of their temporary lodgings in the Seasonal Camp and Admin Building. You, Karkat, Dave, and Dirk all sit down one evening to discuss the Striders' living situation and come to the conclusion that the final decision to either move in with the Cured or stay among the Uninfected (they're something in between, you all agree—Dirk is, at least; and Dave refuses to be separated from his brother) will have to wait until repairs are completely finished, so they remain in the Infirmary for the time being.

Jade fares better, you think, after your talk. She's less wary about coming to you for help if she needs it, and she joins the ranks of people who jump on your case every time you skip a meal. She's not happy about Jake's leaving, that hasn't changed, but she seems less inclined to punch you every time you cross paths. Jake's injury steadily heals despite a minor scare when the area swells up—a topical infection likely brought on by the sweat and grime of daily training—but he's adamant about keeping it clean in the days that follow.

With the confidence brought on by a sword in his hands, Dirk's combat skills rapidly improve, and one morning—just a day before he's set to leave with Jake and the others—Dave, who starts sitting in as a spectator from the twenty-first onward, declares that his brother is back up to the standards they stood by in Houston. Nepeta takes the younger Strider hunting that evening to see how he'll fare in the woods, not just the flat Training Grounds, and (predictably) he passes the test with flying colors.

And then, just like that, it's the twenty-fourth.

* * *

**[6/24/37]  
**

"Come on, Dave—you have to go see him off. Or, well, I guess you don't _have_ to, but you probably should," you sigh, staring at the back of your friend. It's just barely after sunrise and the two of you are in your office, Dave once again sitting under your window. He's slumped backwards over the chair, gazing solemnly out into the quiet morning, and hasn't moved since he dropped his ass in the spot a little under an hour ago. "He'll be fine, trust me. He's a strong kid, and the rest of them aren't anything to laugh at, either. You've seen everyone during training—it's literally their _job_ to kick ass."

He huffs, sagging even farther, and without turning around says, "He doesn't need me out there."

"Maybe," you hum, taking a step backward and turning for the door. "But he might _want_ you out there. It's the first time he's been out on a mission without you, right?"

"Not really. We used to split up every so often back in the city."

You pause in the doorway and sigh again, knowing full well that this is a decision Dave has to make for himself. If you try to drag him to the parking lot, he'll just make the departure harder for everyone. Having someone vocally opposed to the trip, especially a family member, would kill morale, and that's the last thing they need. Setting off is always hard, and no matter how enthusiastic they are about going, it will be especially difficult, you think, for the two that haven't left before. Jake hasn't been off the compound in years, and even Dirk has managed to make himself at home here in the last few weeks.

When Dave doesn't show any sign of following, you leave, stepping out into the quiet emptiness of the deserted campus. The good weather has held up relatively well, and today is no exception. You can only hope it stays that way while the team is gone, too—supply runs are difficult enough as it is without having to battle nature on top of everything else.

When you make it to the parking lot near the Skaia entrance gate, there's a small crowd gathered. Jake and his team are there, performing one last inventory check before they head out, and their families and friends are all lined up, some doing what they can to help while others just cling to each other, trying not to cry. Jane and Roxy have Dirk and Jake trapped in a powerful hug even while your cousin barks orders at the rest of the group, glancing every so often at a list in one hand while his other arm is wrapped around your sister.

Droog, Boxcars, and Deuce are standing silently nearby as Slick responds to Jake every so often, busy checking the bags laid out in front of him, and even though neither Meenah nor Eridan have ever been much for open affection, Feferi and Cronus have them both pinned. Equius, Horuss, and Tavros have all gathered to see Rufioh off, and both Karkat and Nepeta are nearby as well, watching everyone. You spot Rose beside them.

You're surprised to see that even Vriska is there, too, quietly standing next to Terezi while she works. There's no fanfare between them, no sobbing or clinging or even talking, but you know that just having her friend with her is enough for the new Cured—you can see it in her expression. 

The only notable absence aside from Dave is, of course, Jade.

You'd expected it, in some ways, but you can't help but feel disappointed in your cousin. She'd given up trying to switch out Jake for someone else, but that hadn't been the end of her disapproval. Even now, you think, her stubbornness is getting in the way. You're half tempted to go find her, but you know that by the time you do the team will have left, and just like Dave she would only bring the already somber mood down even further. It's not for the best, really, but it's the lesser of two evils.

Jake is the first to spot you, and calls out with a subdued grin when he does. You try to ignore the well-masked but hopeful look Dirk shoots your way, but fail miserably and focus instead on the rest of the group, all of whom turn to you just as you make it to the edge of the asphalt. Slick stands, zipping up the last pack, and slings it over his shoulder.

"Looks like we're ready to shove off," he grunts, and Jake nods.

Even though you have complete trust in your cousin—you'd agreed to let him lead the mission, after all—you can't help but list off from memory some of the supplies they'll be carrying. "Got your phones and battery backs?" you say, coming to a stop in front of the tangled, somehow-still-upright pile of limbs that is your cousin, sister, and their friends. Jake nods. "Fresh water? First aid kits?" Another nod. "Flint and steel? Toilet paper?" More nodding.

"We've been through the equipment thrice already today," Jake says, smiling again, and you can't help but think how _strong_ he looks. This isn't the little ten year old kid who'd driven up with your grandparents from the Carolinas anymore—this is a capable young man who's lived the last six years in hell and come out of it _powerful_.

And you smile too, then, and put a hand on his shoulder, gripping it firm as if that could somehow convey everything you want to say but don't know if you could without getting choked up a little, too. _Be safe, I love you, you can do this_. Instead, you just grasp harder and say, "Good luck."

He lets go of Jane and reaches up to squeeze your forearm, looking you dead in the eyes, suddenly solemn. "Thanks, John." _I will, I love you too, I know_.

After a moment, he bends down to gather both of the girls into a tight hug that lasts almost a full minute before he stands, stepping away even as Jane reaches out to him. You grab her hand so she can't follow and she curls into your side, followed shortly by Roxy when Dirk does the same as your cousin. Slick tosses them both their packs before calling the rest over, and soon everyone is standing at the edge of the gate, suited up and ready to go.

Jake has a pistol and holster on each hip, Dirk's sheathed sword is secured between his back and bag, and both Meenah's staff and Terezi's digging bar are tucked in the same way. Slick's hunting knives—all four of them—are in their leather cases along his belt, Rufioh's compound bow is strapped to the outside of his pack with a quiver of arrows between his back and bag, as well, and Eridan's rifle is slung around his shoulder by a strap. They make quite a sight, you think, even though you've seen most of it all before.

"Ready to go?" you say, standing straight and tall. Both Jane and Roxy cling to you tighter.

Jake nods, taking the unspoken challenge— _are you ready to lead?_ and _yes, of course I am—_ and he holds his head up high and crosses his arms. "Yeah. See you lot in a little over a month. Don't cause too much of a ruckus while we're gone," he laughs, and to your surprise it doesn't sound strained—it's genuine and confident. You can't help the surge of pride that wells up in your chest.

He turns around, then, and the others follow, ready to make their way out into the woods.

"Wait."

It's Dirk who says it, still half turned, already having taken a few steps, but he's watching something over your shoulder. The rest of you follow his line of sight, and—

Dave isn't running, really. Whatever he's doing is a sort of fast walk maybe meant to look nonchalant (but failing miserably). You hear Jake laugh again as Dave approaches, stalking right up to his brother who's completely turned, now. And then, to your surprise, he slugs Dirk across his shoulder. "Don't die, you little shit," he growls, low and dangerous and threatening. And then he holds his fist out and Dirk bumps it with his own, nodding.

"And you have to get back into shape so I can kick your ass in training, Bro, so don't just sit around while I'm gone."

They stare at each other for a moment, and then Dave turns without another word, making his way over to your side where he stands, back rigid, both hands shoved into his pockets.

A few minutes later, the group is gone.

* * *

The rest of the day rolls by in a strange sort of haze, hours punctuated by strange bouts of stinging loneliness even though you're surrounded during most of it by people. It's the same every time a group leaves—you feel the emptiness in the compound, even if you don't see those who've gone every day. This time, though, it's different—more pronounced. The room across from yours is empty, and Dave has been holed up in his own since returning to the Infirmary, off the hook from work for the afternoon. Jane and Roxy have both been particularly subdued, which is unusual for them—or at least for Roxy; Jane falls into a sort of similar funk every time Jade goes, too—while a team is out. 

You cope in the only way you know how, by throwing yourself into your own all-consuming, self-imposed vocation: finding the anomaly.

By the time the sun starts to set, you've run four more gels with no positive results and have a fifth set of samples heating in the thermocycler, and you've managed to skip both lunch and breakfast without realizing it. The fact that no one was sent to find you must be a testament to how down the others are, too, and you can't help but feel guilty for relying on your family for basic necessities like food. It's a new sensation, and you're not sure which is worse—shame or total apathy.

You sigh into your empty room and push your rolling chair back, running a hand through your hair as you do. You don't feel hungry, really, but you know you should eat, and if nothing else check on Jane and Roxy. And Vriska and Dave, too, you think.

The Infirmary is almost entirely empty, now—its only residents you, Tavros, Dave, Gamzee, and Vriska (most of whom are currently living upstairs) with Dirk gone and your temporary neighbors almost entirely moved back into their new homes—so the first floor halls are startlingly silent. Everything is dark, too, in a sort of eerie way; two lines of closed doors and black rooms frame the dim path toward the stairwell. Even though it's been like this so many times before, the last few weeks have been so full of activity you'd almost forgotten what it's like. And now, too, that you're so much more aware of yourself, you can't help but feel a strange sense of isolation at it all. The whole thing makes you uneasy.

The second floor is brighter, but not by much. Tavros has gone somewhere with Gamzee, maybe the Library if you remember correctly, and Vriska hasn't left her room all day, either. You head for Dave's door first because it's the closest to the stairs, and knock gently with no answer. That leaves two possibilities—either he's fallen asleep or he's listening to music, both of which are an indication that he doesn't want to be disturbed. Or he's ignoring you, which is even more of a red flag. After a moment of waiting, you knock again and quietly call out, "Dave?"

Again, no response.

You sigh and turn back down the hallway, hoping you'll have more luck with Vriska, but six steps away you hear the knob turn behind you and you stop.

Dave, for lack of a better phrase, looks like shit.

He's shirtless, wearing only a pair of frayed, red-plaid flannel pajama pants, hunched over slightly like there's a profound weight on his too-thin shoulders, and somehow the dark circles under his eyes you've grown accustomed to seeing seem so much deeper. The healing scars slashed across his skin don't help his pale, sagging appearance, making him more apparition than person in the odd twilight, and his expression—usually neutral or a kind of teasing, arrogant smirk depending on the mood—is set in a heavy, exhausted frown. His white hair, too, is a mess, plastered up on one side like he'd been laying on it for too long.

When you don't say anything, he raises a hand halfway in some sort of stilted wave, and softly mumbles, "'Sup." He sounds just as tired as he looks.

"Hey," you reply just as quietly, still a few paces down the hall. "You okay?" It's a stupid question, though, and you already know the answer. Of course he isn't, but he won't tell you that.

To your surprise, though, he shakes his head. "Nah, dude. But I can't do anythin' about that, I guess. Why're ya up and around?" His voice comes out slow and lazy, Southern accent drawling out like it tends to do when he's not quite awake. Normally, it's almost endearing, in a funny sort of way—unusual. But now, you think, it mostly just seems sad.

You frown, too, then, and sigh again. "I was going to see if you and Vriska wanted dinner, and maybe to check on the girls."

Dave raises an eyebrow at that, and leans against the frame of his door. It doesn't seem to help, though—if anything, he just caves in on himself more. "Roundin' up the sad sacks, huh? That's a pity party waitin' to happen, ya know."

"Might as well be depressed together," you reply with a shrug. He seems to think for a moment, tilting his head back to rest against the wood, and then he shrugs back and stands up straight to follow you without another word. You don't try to get him to talk, either, as much as you think a distraction would help. There's nothing to say.

When Vriska opens her door, she has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a thick book clutched against her chest. Since her arrival, in an attempt to keep her occupied when she refused to leave her room and even after she started feeling comfortable enough to do so, Rose had taken to sitting with her after their talks or in odd free moments, carefully going through piles of paperbacks from the Admin Building to see if there were any Vriska might like. The result is a kind of bibliophilic haven, stacks and stacks of novels forming a ring around her mattress; a literary wall not quite towering, but impressive nonetheless, almost isolating her from the rest of the room—and, as a result, the rest of reality, too. It's helped, though. The books, you think, have played a large part in her slow but steady mental and emotional recovery.

Even so, she looks tired, just like Dave. Her blond hair looks thin and exhausted, just like the rest of her, and even though she's gained back some of the weight lost during the journey here and the early weeks when she couldn't hold much down or flat-out refused to eat altogether, she still looks borderline skin-and-bones.

You can't help but wonder far too late if you'd made the right decision sending Dirk and Terezi off. Jake had been one thing, an issue in and of itself, but the absence of Dave's brother and Vriska's closest friend presents its own set of ramifications to deal with, as well—namely, its effect on the wellbeing of two of your patients. You don't regret letting them join (it was the best thing for _them_ , really), but you wonder if you should have done a little more to prepare for the aftermath of their departure.

Vriska sighs at you and Dave standing in her doorway, and raises both eyebrows. She's looking better, overall—less shaking and perpetually terrified—but it will be a long time before she's back to the way she used to be, if she ever is at all. "What do you want?" she says, although her bite doesn't have any real venom.

You gesture vaguely at Dave (who has his arms crossed and should probably put on a shirt at some point if he's coming to the Cafeteria with you), and say, "We're going to look for food. Do you want to come?"

At the mention of dinner, Vriska perks up a bit, but the hopeful looks quickly fades at the implication you'll all be _leaving_. You'd known that might happen, as she hasn't been able to successfully sit through a crowded meal yet, only coming anywhere near close with Terezi or Rose nearby. And now, especially, you don't think she would be able to. She shakes her head a little. "Nah, I'm not hungry," she mumbles, one hand already moving to close the door.

Time for Plan B.

"We can bring you something if you want?"

She pauses, thinking, and then hums a little. "I guess," she says, shrugging slightly.

A good start, now to push your luck. "A change of scenery might help, though," you say as she starts to close the door again, and she frowns again. "Downstairs, maybe? You could hang out in my room until we come back, and I don't know... we could all eat together there or something."

Dave snorts beside you, and mumbles, " _Definitely_ a pity party," under his breath. You shoot him a scowl that doesn't really seem to have any effect.

Vriska, however, hesitates again, like she's genuinely considering your proposition. Then she slowly nods, and you physically resist the urge to fist-pump. A small victory but a victory all the same, and you'll take what you can get.

Soon, the three of you are trudging sluggishly back down the hall and toward the first floor, stopping only outside of Dave's room so he can find a clean shirt to wear. Vriska brings her blanket and book, trailing the former along behind her like a very warm, comforting cape, and when Dave reemerges he has one of his own, too. The sight is almost endearing—both of them curled up in mobile cocoons, and for a moment you're struck by the fact that they look so young. That they _are_ so young. That you're _all_ so young—yourself included.

You push the thought away and keep walking.

Your room is still covered with the mess of your mission, and as soon as the three of you walk in you make some attempt at straightening the place before quickly giving up, only having moved most of the electrophoresis gels from the table in the center of your room to the counters along your wall. The thermocycler is still whirring, but no one seems particularly bothered by the light hum (and you can't turn it off without damaging the samples, anyway) so you just let it run.

Once Vriska is settled in—curled up in the chair under your window that Dave has practically claimed as his own over the past week—you start to leave, only for Dave to declare he's going to wait here, too. You shrug, a little disappointed for some reason but understanding all the same, and by the time you're out the door he's started making himself at home in your bed-blanket-pile. It's late, and he's mentally exhausted, and Vriska might like the company, anyway.

The dining hall is deserted and dark, a clear sign that it's much later than you'd originally thought. The kitchens, however, still seem to have some muted activity; the sound of running water and muffled conversation floats up into the odd silence of the main room, so there might still be some hope, you think.

Sure enough, when you round the corner to the kitchens, Rose, Jane, Roxy, and Feferi are busy at work washing dishes. They have a subdued sort of assembly line set up, Rose and Feferi at the sink scrubbing and the girls off to the side, armed with towels, drying what's handed to them. They all look exhausted, too.

As soon as you enter, all four turn to look at you, but you're not greeted with the usual shrieks and hugs you've grown accustomed to. Instead, Jane goes a little pale. "Oh, we forgot, I'm sorry," she frets quietly, and Roxy frowns. Even Rose looks embarrassed, and Feferi sighs.

You just shake your head and wave them off, trying to keep your voice light. "Don't worry about it, it's my fault for not coming in the first place. Are there any leftovers? Dave and Vriska—"

"We can whip something up quickly," Rose sighs, shutting off the water. "We didn't make our rounds to the Infirmary and that is on us." You blink in response, a little caught off guard by how clipped her tone is, but you can't tell if she's frustrated with you or herself, maybe, for the oversight. After she pats her hands dry on a stray towel, she ushers the girls into action.

A thought occurs to you, then, because you realize you don't quite know their routine and something already seems slightly off. "Have you guys eaten yet?" you ask, and immediately Feferi rubs her temples with a small groan.

Rose sighs again, deeper this time, and hums, "We're on quite the roll this evening," bemused, as Jane and Roxy exchange a tired look.

"We put it all away," Jane says, hushed, in an almost exhausted awe at their own mistake. "I guess we were running on autopilot and we just... cleaned it all up."

You frown again and shake your head, suddenly worried. Forgetfulness is out of character for Rose, you think, especially when it comes to things like this—things that impact other people so fundamentally, like food. It seems like everyone is burned out today, more so than you realized or predicted. Even if you're not strictly their leader in name anymore, you doubt you'll ever be able to leave the job behind, so you don't even think before you start rolling your sleeves up and move toward the sink. "I'll take care of this," you say, and even though Jane looks like she's about to protest (maybe because of the work itself or the injuries on your arms, you're not sure) Rose nods, effectively silencing her.

"Thank you, John," she hums tiredly, and you nod back.

"Of course."

You don't mind the work, and soon you fall into a steady rhythm of washing and drying, washing and drying, washing and drying, backed up against the soundtrack of Jane and Roxy's soft conversation, Feferi's gentle prodding, and Rose's quiet direction. You go at a much slower pace than they had, but no one seems to mind, and when they finish putting together two trays stacked up with warm sandwiches all four of them crowd around to help finish the task. You idly ask if they'd like to join you and the Confederacy of Sad Sacks in your room to eat, and that gets a chuckle out of Roxy as her mother agrees. The more the merrier, you think, even though you doubt there will be very much _merry_ at all.

When you return to the Infirmary, Vriska is in the same place, reading her book in the light of a lamp that's been pulled over from the counter. Dave is sprawled out on your sort-of-bed still, too, listening to a piano piece on his phone without earbuds. The music floats up through the dim room, softening the atmosphere, giving your office a kind of peaceful feel that somehow seems so foreign and _nice_ all at once. Both perk up slightly when you enter followed by a gaggle of girls bearing food, and before long you're all sitting on the floor in a circle, empty trays between you. Dave doesn't turn off his phone, and dinner is mostly eaten in silence while a long-forgotten sonata plays.

After a while, however, Roxy speaks up. She's sitting cross legged between Jane and her mother, munching softly on a slice of homemade bread, and her voice is so soft you almost miss it.

"What do you think they're doing right now?"

Everyone sort of stills, looking down at their laps or food or just away, really—away from the question itself and the thoughts that come with it—until Rose turns to you. Because, really, you're the only one who could answer it. Although Jane has been with you since the beginning, too, she's never been out on a supply run—she was so young when it all started—and everyone else in the room only arrived after you'd moved from the original camp to the University, so there'd never been a need to send them out where there were others who could go. In theory, Dave could hazard a fairly accurate guess, but you doubt he'll make a move to speak.

You swallow your food and hum, and that brings everyone's attention to you, too, as you say, "It's late, so they've probably already set up camp. Most should be asleep by now, except for maybe whoever has the first watch."

Roxy nods, thoughtful, and turns back to her food, and after a moment so long you start to think that's the end of the conversation she says, "I hope they're alright."

Jane reaches over to squeeze her hand and, before you can respond, says, "I'm sure they're just fine," with so much quiet conviction there's no room left to doubt her words. That one single statement is enough to lift the room just a fraction, and you all feel it—and you're all sure too. They're just fine.

They're just _fine_.

Sometime later, when the plates have been cleared and set aside, no one is particularly inclined to leave the quiet company and support of others missing their loved ones so you all sit for a while, listening to Dave's music and making idle conversation, until Jane fetches a deck of cards from Vriska's room at Rose's suggestion with, of course, Vriska's consent. It's well past one in the morning, now, but no one seems tired, and as the mood continues to lighten with the distraction, you message Jade on a whim to see if she's still awake.

She is, likely for the same reason you all are, and you invite her to join what really _has_ become something of a small party, pity-based or not. You don't know where she's spending the night, but you doubt she's anywhere near her own tent. The emptiness there would be even more pronounced, you think, than the absence in the room across from yours. You're surprised when she agrees, because she hadn't shown up to see Jake's team off and you doubt she'd want to be in the same room with you, either. But she does, and you're glad.

Twenty or so minutes later she arrives, and she gets the greeting you hadn't when you entered the kitchen—tight hugs from the girls. She hugs them back, too, just as firm, and even Rose joins in after a moment.

The addition of an eighth person spreads the cards too thin for the uncharacteristically mellow game of Democracy you'd been playing, so after going around the circle Vriska, to your surprise a second time, suggests Creights. The idea is readily accepted, and you all split up into pairs after she jots down the rules on a scrap of paper. Jade's competitive streak does what the rest of you couldn't to completely break the melancholy, and soon she and Rose are exchanging smug high-fives between high-pitched victory shouts and raucous giggling. Somehow, you and Dave become the target of their team ( _definitely_ due to foul play, you think) because they figure out that you don't have any diamond suits and use all of their nines and eights to make your lives miserable.

At some point, the music gets changed to something slightly more upbeat to match the mood, and there's an unexpected turnaround when Roxy and Jane hit a winning streak starting with the single card deal. The girls' laughter sets you laughing, too, and then Feferi, and then Jade and Rose and Vriska and even Dave. By the time you hit the end of the game, everyone is in such high spirits you all decide to play again, this time switching the order of rotation, and when Dave's phone dies and the music stops you don't even notice—you're all too damn loud to hear it anyway.

Vriska and Feferi take the second game, just as into it as the rest of you, and by the time you're finished Roxy is sprawled out with her head in Jane's lap, half asleep, and your little sister looks just about ready to collapse, too. No one feels much like moving, so without any real degree of protest you, Dave, and Rose gather up an impressive collection of blankets from the now-empty rooms on the first floor and your office becomes a plushy dog pile of limbs and fabric. And it's nice, you think. Really, really, _really_ nice.

You fall asleep surrounded by people you love, laughter still halfway bubbled in your chest, and you don't even spare a second thought to the thermocycler on your counter that's long-since finished its last spins. Because right now, it doesn't matter. Because right now, even if it _did_ matter, you wouldn't care.

Because right now, for the first time in far too long, you're _happy_.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter theme: [Atlas: Touch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT8Z7C90UNs) by Sleeping At Last
> 
> I apologize for how long it took me to get this published, and thank you so much for your patience! All of your wonderful comments here and messages on tumblr have kept me going these past few (rocky) weeks. <3
> 
> In tonight's Fanart Corner *jazz hands* we have have [**this AMAZING John**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/139928604772/moregaymemes-guess-what-just-updated-guess) by tumblr user moregaymemes, and [**this ADORABLE Slick and Dave**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/139932325947/geringeding-doodled-some-crap-in-sketchbook) from chapter 17 by tumblr user geringeding. Thank you so much, guys! <3
> 
> To keep things short, I'll bullet the rest of the stuff, because my chapter notes have been getting pretty long lately.
> 
>   * I posted a [map of the compound](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/142766839367/map-of-skaian-universitycompound-i-drew-this-back) today!
>   * I also posted [Dave's character soundtrack](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck%20music)!
>   * Check out the freightstuck [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI)! 
>   * Or the tumblr [soundtrack tag](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck%20music) on my blog!
>   * If you have anything to show me, post it in the tumblr [freightstuck](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag! 
>   * A special thanks goes to my lovely editing team, [chrisytopher](http://chrisytopher.tumblr.com/), [treeprince](http://treeprince.tumblr.com/), and [psuedopassionfruit!](http://psuedopassionfruit.tumblr.com/)
> 

> 
> I love you all very much! Thank you so, so, so much for sticking with me for so long! And HAPPY 4/13!!


	21. Tale il Padre, Tale il Figlio

**[6/27/37]**

**== > BE THE NEW KID**

"Why hasn't anyone considered the practicality of horseback riding as an effective means of transportation?"

"What?" Jake looks up from his sandwich and blinks at you across the fire, effectively cutting off whatever animated conversation he'd been having with Eridan about the merits of handguns over rifles—which, in turn, silences the rest of the group. You hadn't meant to interrupt, really—if anything, you'd just sort of been talking to yourself—but, now that everyone is staring at you, you can't exactly take the question back.

You've all been camped out for something like an hour now—since just before sunset—resting from your third day's nine hour hike through the mountains, chatting around the fire as you finish up dinner and base check-in. The atmosphere is surprisingly light for the level of exhaustion you're all feeling, something you hadn't really expected when you asked to go on this mission. It's nothing like the trip with Bro, TZ, Vriska, and Gamzee, when every day was tense and almost totally silent as you all stared at your phones and did your best not to fight. No, you've spent the last three days wrapped up in a whirlwind of jokes, stories, and brief detours whenever someone sees a particularly impressive bird or bug in the trees. You don't know whether it's because you're still relatively early into the expedition or if this is just the way missions with people from the university are—if the levity is the mark of a group of people who've known each other for years, or the perfect combination of personalities, or just... _Jake_.

Either way, you're not about to start complaining.

Your name is DIRK STRIDER, and you are SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. Right about now, you're something like SEVENTY-TWO MILES away from THE SKAIAN UNIVERSITY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, which really fucking tickles your unparalleled sense of IRONY because you spent FOUR MONTHS trying to get there in the first place, only to VOLUNTARILY LEAVE exactly ONE MONTH later. You wonder idly if your BRO would appreciate the unexpected twist, too, but decide that even if he DID, he probably WOULDN'T TELL YOU. You haven't heard from him since you left, and briefly consider MESSAGING HIM, but first you have to deal with the conversation about HORSES that you unintentionally started.

You stretch your legs out and lean back on the palms of your hands, letting the fire warm the bottom of your bare feet while you pointedly ignore all of the attention suddenly directed at you. Now that it's late June, the temperature has been steadily rising during daylight hours, but the nights are still relatively chilly—not that it makes much of a difference to you. Your sensitivity to the cold is less pronounced than, say, Jake's or Meenah's or Slick's, but you're not quite at the point of near-immunity Eridan, Terezi, and Rufioh have achieved. Karkat and John had been right to describe you as something in between, you think, which is both weird and neat in its own way.

"I'm just saying," you hum, shrugging a little. "No gasoline to worry about, they can travel on all types of terrain. They're pretty sturdy animals, too; so, barring freak accidents there's no real risk of mechanical malfunction, and extra supplies would be limited to feed and stuff. Plus horseback riding would be exponentially faster than walking."

Slick, who's been half-dozing against the trunk of a nearby tree with his hat tilted over his eyes for the last twenty minutes, mumbles, "The kid has a point," which sets the rest of the group humming and nodding in an almost unsettling unison.

 Jake, however, doesn't look entirely convinced. "Where would we even _get_ horses?" he says, still sort of staring at you, and Terezi laughs from her perch up in the branches of another tree, swinging her legs a little.

Again, you shrug. "Oregon has one of the largest wild horse and burro populations in the country," you say, "or at least it did six years ago. Without local authorities controlling team size and roaming territory, that number has likely grown. Their grazing zones extend into south Washington, too, and probably farther now. Theoretically, you could try to tame a few."

Meenah gives you a look somewhere between impressed and mocking, then snickers, "Why the fuck do you know so much about horse populations in the PNW? You're from Texas," just as Rufioh nods again—from what you can tell, he's the only one seriously considering your haphazard idea.

"Traveling on horseback wasn't real uncommon back on the Reservation," he says, finishing off his own sandwich and sparing you the hassle of answering Meenah's question, "considering the price of gas and the state of things up there, and our people were originally a horse nation anyway. Me, Tav, Eq, and Horuss all know how to ride—plus all the other refugees that came with us—and that's how we got so far from South Dakota in the first place, anyway; horses and a few cars. They're sweet animals, loyal to a fault and crazy smart."

That piques your interest a little, and you realize then that you don't really know much about anyone from the compound, save maybe Jane, Roxy, and Jake. Where everyone had come from, how long everyone has been at the university, who everyone had been before the world fucking exploded—your group is the newest addition, but John and his family have been collecting people from all over for almost a decade, now. "What happened to them? The horses I mean," you ask. Rufioh runs a hand through his wild, dark hair.

"Some died, some were killed, some were lost, some got—some got used for food when we started running out. Shit was a different time, you know? Now we can run two or three states over no problem, but that was early, when nobody had any idea what was going on and most of us hadn't ever left the Reservation before in our lives, anyway. We were some of the first to meet up with them—" he laughs a little, kind of dry, and gestures toward Jake, who suddenly looks solemn, "—and they didn't know what the hell they were doing either."

Slick grunts, and when you look over he's tilted his hat back far enough so that you can all see his face, now. " _Different time_ feels kinda like an understatement. Now we got buildings and a real kitchen and shit. Back then we were all livin' in tents or in nothin' at all—droppin' off one by one whenever it snowed. Lost a lot of good people early on."

The three of them—Jake, Slick, and Rufioh—all exchange a look, and a huge part of you wants to ask what they mean. But judging by their faces, you can make your own connections. Meenah and Eridan, too, are having an uncharacteristically sober moment, and you wonder, then, if you have the same sort of bond with the people you survived alongside, too. You glance over at TZ and see that she's got her head tilted to the side, turned slightly in your direction—and decide that's probably the case even if you don't necessarily act on it surrounded by so many new people. No matter how much time passes here, living in Washington, the five of you will always be the dumbasses from Houston.

"What about you?" you ask, curiosity getting the best of you, and only after the question leaves your mouth do you realize that's probably none of your business in the first place.

Slick grunts, sliding back farther and tipping his hat down again, and for a moment you think he's not going to answer and wonder if you've crossed some kind of line. But once he's settled in he huffs and says, "Me and my boys are from Portland. Got the hell out of dodge early on and joined up right after the Native Americans, a few weeks at most." He waves a lazy hand toward Rufioh, who flashes him a thumbs up he probably doesn't see.

You snort. "Your boys?"

"Yeah, my boys."

"What are you, the mafia or some shit?" you laugh a little, because all at once you have this picture in your head: Slick backed by shadowy, menacing figures in some abandoned warehouse by the coast—prying fingers off a helpless small-time shop owner with a pair of pliers as compensation for unpaid protection money. Or Slick smoking in the back room of a seedy speakeasy, playing pool and discussing the gang's latest run in with the fuzz. Real 1920's shit.

When Slick just casually hums, "Mhmm," you cut off your chuckle so quick you almost start choking on your food.

"Holy shit."

A lot of things suddenly make sense.

Your reaction sets everyone else laughing again, clearly amused by your misfortune, and you flip off as many people as you can. The effect is lost on both TZ and Slick, but you get some kind of satisfaction from the action and that's all that matters.

After a few seconds, the giggles die down and Terezi swings her feet, rustling the leaves of the branch she's balanced on, and that gets the attention of the group enough to calm what's left. "So Gangster Guy's from Oregon, Horse Boy's from South Dakota, me and Mini-Strider are from Texas. What about the rest of you? Since we're on the topic anyway."

"California," Meenah grunts, jerking her head in Eridan's direction. She's cross-legged, leaning against the base of a tree on the other side of the fire, one arm loosely wrapped around her propped-up _bo_ staff. Eridan nods in response, and even though TZ can't see the motion she seems to get it—or, unlike you, she might've already known that Eridan and Meenah came as a pair. "Super west coast, Crescent City. Our families ran a restaurant on the boardwalk."

"I guess that explains why Fef's so good at cooking," Terezi laughs, "and Cronus too. Didn't think you two were the type, though."

Eridan snorts in response, and he and Meenah exchange a sort of amused look. "She can't cook w-worth anythin'," he says, a little smug, and Meenah scowls, stretching a foot out to kick him in the side. He shoots her a glare before continuing, "Meenah w-was a surfer—brought money in that way, travelin' to competitions and shit. I w-worked administration, helped manage the place."

"Huh," you say as Terezi hums at the new information. You're kind of impressed by the fact that the four of them—Meenah, Cronus, Feferi, and Eridan—all managed to stay close for so long, to stay alive and make it up to John's place after spending so long _before_ together, too. They're lucky—not everyone has had the luxury of keeping their family, or at least the people they might consider family.

Neither of them elaborate any more, so the pause that follows leaves Jake as the only one who hasn't answered. He doesn't immediately volunteer any information, and instead just sort of pokes at the fire with a stray stick, busying himself with aimless fidgeting like he's not quite paying attention, or like he's forgotten about the question altogether. Or maybe like he's avoiding it, you think, although you can't really imagine why. TZ prompts him with a brief, "What about you, Mr. Team Leader?" and he just sort of blinks for a moment, before chuckling awkwardly. It sounds sort of strained.

"I'm from all over," he says, shrugging. "Been quite a few places and done quite a few things."

The vague answer makes you think he really _might_ be dodging the whole thing, which piques your curiosity. Because in all the time you'd talked—in all the months you'd messaged on the road, and in all the late-night conversations you've shared—he's never once been particularly revealing about his past. Part of you gets it, really. You all have things you don't want to talk about, and who you used to be doesn't really matter anymore, but it's a harmless question in and of itself. Inconsequential. A one-word answer would suffice well enough, but he's not even giving you that. It's unlike him, or at least unlike him so far as your impression of him goes. You've always figured him to be an open sort of person.

Tossing aside your better judgment in favor of the keen interest that's suddenly itching at the back of your brain, you prod him with a short, "You've got an accent, though, so you're not American."

He snorts, not looking up from the fire he's still a little too engrossed in jabbing. "America doesn't exist anymore, mate." You roll your eyes at that.

"Well, before America stopped being a thing, then. You weren't from here originally."

Eridan speaks up, then, looking mildly intrigued as well. "I'v-ve been around for tw-wo years and I don't have any idea w-where you're from, either. W-what's up with that?"

"Because it's rather unimportant, don't you think?" he hums, brow furrowing.

Terezi, however, isn't taking _no_ for an answer—or isn't taking a refusal to answer as an answer, really. "You do that thing with your _r_ 's and _a_ 's, so I'm guessing Australian or English," she says, "or you're from somewhere else and learned English from someone who speaks it that way."

Meenah snorts. "English Jake English speaking English with an English accent."

"Try sayin' that fiv-ve times fast."

The two of them, Eridan and Meenah, share a chuckle at that, but Jake doesn't look particularly amused. You glance over at Slick and see that his hat is tipped up again, now, and he's watching all of you with an unreadable expression on his face. As Meenah and Eridan's mild laughter starts to die down, he says, "Let it go, you shits," kind of low and casual, but at the same time those five words feel something like a warning. Terezi doesn't take the hint.

"My bet's on England, then. It'd be funny if it were true. Kind of unfortunate about your name, though. It's pretty common, right? But you ended up with it. Weird wordplay aside that's a shitty coincidence considering everything that happened six years ago—being born in England with the same last name as—"

Suddenly, the stick in Jake's hand snaps, cutting off the rest of TZ's sentence, and he abruptly stands. "I'm going to make one more circle around the perimeter," he bites out, tossing both pieces of the broken twig into the fire, and before anyone can say anything else he's disappeared into the darkness of the woods around your impromptu camp.

A moment that seems to last something like a small eternity passes in his wake, all of you left looking after him in a sort of stunned silence, startled by his reaction to what should have been a joke, you think. The weird suspension of reality only ends when Slick sighs, "Told ya to leave it alone," and slides his hat back down over his eyes with a flourish of finality that tells all of you the conversation is officially over.

One by one the others start settling in for the night, finishing off their dinners and curling up under camping blankets—or however they prefer to sleep—without more than a few snippets of muffled conversation. The air feels heavy, now, subdued in a way it hasn't been since you left. Like you've all royally fucked up and you're one collective bunch of kicked puppies instead of fully-functioning mostly-adults on a mission to ensure the continued survival of hundreds of people.

In a way, you sort of understand it—Jake's reaction, that is. You all have secrets, and all of you have things you don't want to talk about. For sure, you do too, and you think you would probably react in a similar way if someone tried to pick at an old wound like Jake's past and name might be for him. You can admit you're kind of curious too, though.

You know exactly where Terezi had been going with her comment—Lord Caliborn English, head scientist at English Industries, dead destroyer of the world. And you know as much as anyone else about him—that he'd immigrated to the US from England something like ten years before his biomedical abomination went global, preferring to pursue science outside his homeland where supposed memories of his so-called _lost loved one_ , a twin sister, haunted him, or so the interviews and articles said.

He'd won countless awards and had been worth billions of dollars, but somehow—despite what seems like overwhelming media attention throughout the final decade of humanity—he'd managed to keep his personal life out of the spotlight. He'd remained an enigma of a man even after his death, too—attempts to track down remaining family by enraged military forces and borderline-suicidal muckrakers dug up nothing but a homeless, alcoholic divorcee who hadn't seen her ex-husband in almost a decade. She'd been killed lynch-style, you remember reading somewhere, by radical rioters who wanted any kind of compensation for the suffering of their own families and friends.

That in mind, Jake—who shares a last name with Lord English, and who, given his reaction, is likely from the same place on the world map—had to have felt similar repercussions over the last six years. Coincidence or not, when people are angry and afraid they're not particularly inclined toward rationality.

You've never taken him to be the kind of person to dwell on something like that, though—a stroke of bad luck, a nomenclatural fluke. By now, everyone's more or less gotten over it and started focusing on survival in the present, at least in your experience. If you ever met the guy responsible for it all, you'd sure as hell make him regret ever being born, and you know you're not alone in that—but you're not about to crucify someone for some universal fuck-up he has no control over. You wonder if something happened because of it in the past, something he can't leave behind.

You wonder if he's _not_ the kind of person you think he is.

Suddenly, you realize you might not know Jake as well as you thought, and that bugs you. That _really_ bugs you. Because he's your friend, your bro, the first person you've clicked well with in, like, a really fucking long time. He's _new_. And you hate not knowing things, which is probably a personality flaw. You've always been like that, though—you'll pick things apart so you can see all the pieces, so you can understand every facet of every cog and how it all fits together.

You like Jake, you think—as much as you're capable of liking someone you've only known for a short time—and you want to _get_ everything about him. You don't know if you feel that way _because_ you like him, or because that's just the way you are, but you have a sort of profound, third-person internal understanding of the fact that once you've started thinking about it—once you've realized there are things you _don't_ know about him—the itch isn't going to go away.

Half an hour later, when Jake returns, you're split between feeling like the world's biggest fucking hypocrite (because you have things you'll never get over, too—things you don't want to talk about and don't want anyone _else_ talking about) and a man born for the singular purpose of figuring out who the hell Jake fucking English really is.

(And as Jake quietly puts out the fire—barely sparing a glance in your direction because you have the first watch anyway, so it's not odd that you're still awake—you idly wonder if this trip is going to dig up things that should have been left buried six years ago. If this trip is going to ruin the both of you.)

* * *

**[6/29/37]**

"Okay, but hear me out—"

"No."

"Shut up, TZ."

"You've been talking about horses for two days, Strider. Let it die."

You flip her off from behind and think maybe you've been doing that too often lately. Not so much that you're going to stop, though.

Terezi, predictably, remains totally unfazed and flicks her own middle finger up at you in return. Someone must have told her you were doing it, then. Or she just felt like getting on your nerves with a stroke of impeccable timing.

Slick, off to the side, heaves a heavy sigh, and you wonder if he's suffering more from your shitty antics because he's the oldest—like fifty or something; practically ancient—or because he's second-in-command of this shit-show and feels like it's his job to keep all of you in line when Jake doesn't.

It's day, now—mid-afternoon when the sun is glaring daggers directly into your skull and the temperature is (for everyone but you and TZ) a mile short of anything near pleasant. Seventy-five isn't bad for the two of you because of where you're from, but the cloudless sky and bright lights are doing a perfectly fine job of irritating you the same way the heat is for almost everyone else. Terezi is the only one in an even remotely decent mood, but, as the hours wear on, even that seems to be considerably thinning.

You've been hiking since nine, and only recently was the collective decision made to move off the roads and into the shade of the trees—too soon to make much of a difference in the overall mood of the group. Soon, you'll be stopping for lunch, and then you have another five hours to go before you can camp out again for the night. Jake's up in front, leading the pack with his phone in his hand, keeping an eye on the map as you trail along the side of some interstate or highway you don't know the name of, and he's been unusually silent. His attempts to raise morale early on were severely rebuffed, and you think that probably dampened his own spirits well enough to make up for the fact that he doesn't seem particularly bothered by the environmental challenges around you.

And, whether out of spite born from your own aggravation or just sheer fucking boredom, you refuse to let the horse issue go.

"Horses would maximize the overall quantity of extra supplies we could transport across long distances and reduce the number of people needed to go out on long trips like this," you say, completely ignoring Terezi's last comment.

Meenah wordlessly groans up ahead, and Slick sighs again. " _Fine_ ," he huffs. "If ya can find a fuckin' horse, ya can keep it, I don't give a shit. I'd bet huge sums of meaningless money that ya can't ride one, though."

"I'm from Texas, fuck off."

"Oh, like _that_ means jack shit. Pyrope's from Texas and she can't do it—she's fuckin' blind."

TZ makes an offended noise and whaps Slick with the digging bar she's been using as a sight cane since you all left. She'd opted not to take her slightly-less-lethal stand-in along, likely due to the fact that her new weapon of choice serves the purpose just fine, but it's made her spontaneous attacks even more violent than usual. Slick lets out a stream of curses and then starts counting under his breath, hopefully to keep himself from punching someone half his age.

At the rate things are going, there's a very real chance you're all going to kill each other before you make it to the Idaho-Montana border.

"I bet I could learn," you say, feeling sweet retribution at Slick's pain. "It can't be that hard." Slick glares at you but doesn't say anything.

Instead, for the first time in hours, Rufioh speaks up. "It's actually much more difficult than, like, century-old Western movies make you think. Riding is one thing, horse care is another. At this point you're probably not going to find a domesticated horse, anyway—you'd have to tame one. And if you tried to do that you'd die."

"Bullshit. Horses are gentle, majestic gifts of the natural world."

There's a stunned sort of pause, and then Terezi starts fucking _cackling_. Within seconds everyone else is caught halfway between snorting and fucking _dying_ , too, like the laughter is a contagious disease. It's such a sudden shift in mood—from near-palpable anger to sheer, unbridled _joy—_ that you almost start chuckling, too; until you realize they're all probably laughing at you, and then you just sort of ignore everyone.

Jake, almost physically doubled over, now—clutching his sides and practically wheezing—chokes out a weak, "Come on, Strider—lighten up a bit. It was quite a statement, and you must admit it was a bit shocking from someone like you."

"Oh yeah?" you say, keeping pace as the rest start to slow down to catch their breaths. You end up toward the front of the pack with no extra effort, and briefly consider leaving the entire group behind. "I bet you can't ride one, either."

"As a matter of fact I can," he retorts, sounding _extremely_ smug about the fact that he can sit on the back of a large four-legged animal without falling on his face. _So_ impressive.

"Of course you can," you huff. "That's such a fucking English thing. All the asshole jockey kings of the fucking world live in the fucking UK."

You want to believe that the jab is unintentional—a slip of the tongue into territory you _know_ you shouldn't be touching—but if you're honest with yourself, if you're _completely_ honest with yourself, you're one-hundred-percent aware even before the words are out of your mouth that this is a capital-letter Bad Idea. But you can feel it again—that prickle. The strange, distant discomfort in ignorance of _anything_. It comes on quick, zooming into the forefront of your focus, and as soon as you've said the word _English_ you know you won't be able to just _let it go_ like Slick had told you to two nights ago. In truth, you've been thinking about it since then, but you've done your best to push it aside for the good of the mission. But God, it _itches_.

Almost everyone else bites off their laughter as soon as you've finished your sentence, and even though Jake's doesn't quite stop, it's suddenly dampened. "Are you going for a new record? How many times you can use the word _fucking_ in a single statement?" he says, very pointedly ignoring the implication that he actually _is_ from the United Kingdom.

You decide one attempt to push the envelope is enough for today and reply, "Hell fucking yeah," instead of the six or seven leading questions you've got rolling around your head in an instant, each designed to carefully steer the conversation back in the direction you want it to go. Jake laughs again, a little breathier, a little more genuine, and suddenly you wonder if he knows what you're doing—letting him off the hook like that.

(You also wonder why you feel like that—like you're the one in control of the situation, and why you feel like you have to be. But at the same time you know that's just the way you are, because if you don't have every aspect of _everything_ in your hands there's the possibility of an error occurring that's beyond your ability to fix, and mistakes get people killed.)

As the mood starts lightening again, brought on by the shift in subject and the shade, maybe, you glance back and see Slick eyeing you, and realize that—regardless of whether or not Jake's figured out your biggest personality flaw— _Slick_ gets it. You don't quite know what that means yet. He doesn't comment, though, and suddenly you can't help but think that you're not the only one perfectly capable of playing mind games with other people. Instead, he heaves another sigh and calls, "Jake—I'm makin' a new rule. Next time someone mentions the word _horse_ , I get full authority to punch 'em without consequence."

Jake laughs, nods, and says, "Sure, sure," over his shoulder with a dismissive hand wave.

(Only after things are back to what could be considered _normal_ does it occur to you that Slick calls everyone by their last name except Jake.)

* * *

**[7/1/37]**

On the seventh day, it starts to rain.

It's not unforeseen, really—the good weather has held out for almost three weeks, now, an unusual occurrence in this part of the country (can you even think that anymore? Country? Maybe this part of the continental geography, then) and you're long overdue for something, at least. Terezi catches it early on, claiming the air smells different, and you all have plenty of time to mentally and physically prepare yourselves. The whole affair is nothing short of anticlimactic, and even the hazy drizzle seems like it's only putting in enough effort to get your group slightly damp.

The rain, too, provides just the right amount of cloud cover to keep the sun at a reasonable level for you, Rufioh, and Eridan, and the atmosphere cools down enough to allow comfortable movement along the road itself during the day. Without the risk of boiling alive in a pool of your own sweat on the black asphalt, traveling is a much smoother affair—the flat ground is easier on your legs, and according to Jake you'll be able to add a bit of extra distance without walking any longer than usual.

Really, the day goes well, and by now everyone is thoroughly wedged in a mood somewhere between energized and content. It's nice.

There is, however, one small problem that you fail to realize is _actually_ a problem until someone points it out to you.

 

— tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timeausTestified [TT] at 11:51 —

 

TG: so has jakey gone blind yet?

TT: What?

TG: is he stumblin around and trippin over stuff cause he cant see

TG: sol said if eridan is doin the same thing u gotta laugh at him btw

TG: altho i think eri is probs havin an easier time than mr pistlo

TG: *pistol

TT: What are you talking about?

TG: sol said it was rainin where you guys r before he left to go sleep or w/e

TG: which means its probs been rainin for a while

TG: which means jakey is probs dyin right about now

TT: What does the rain have to do with anything? Does he have a chronic phobia of water?

TT: He seems perfectly fine to me.

TG: omg dirk how can a genius be so dense

TT: I'm of the opinion that backhanded compliments exist in lingual equilibrium due to their contradictory nature, so I'm going to ignore that statement.

TG: u just aknowled ged it tho

TG: *acknowledged

TT: Shit.

TG: 1 point for rolal

TT: Seriously, though. What are we talking about?

TG: glasses dirk glasses

TT: Oh.

TG: without somethin dry to keep rubbin them on hes probably sufferin

You glance up from your phone, then, to look at Jake, who's still trudging along at the front of the group like always. But now that you're _really_ , looking—and looking for something wrong, at that—you can tell that his movements are a little more sluggish, and that his steps are a little more careful. Slick is walking next to him, both hands shoved in the pockets of his pants, keeping pace with Jake, but whenever there's a particularly rough part in the road or a fallen branch he'll move to the side ever so slightly and Jake will follow. 

You look down at you own feet for a moment and realize, suddenly, that all the movements you don't have to think about because your eyes do the work of getting the message to your brain and then to your legs—he can't do them without proper depth perception, when the world is probably blurry as shit and faceted through the streaks of rain on his glasses.

A glance over at Eridan tells you Meenah is doing the same for him, but to a lesser extent, maybe because his vision it better than Jake's due to the nature of his body—gray and Cured and sensorially acute.

Huh.

TT: They both seem fine. I doubt either of them would be out here anyway if their impaired vision were a liability.

TG: it rlly isnt that bad but itll make jakey less accurate in a close range fight if u run into trouble or somethin

TT: Isn't that the opposite of how it usually works?

TG: jakeys farsighted, not nearsighted

TG: less common but its a thing you know

TT: Yet another thing about him that I wasn't aware of. Interesting.

TG: u keepin tabs?

TG: thats a lil creepy distri

TT: I'd call it warranted curiosity. I'm entrusting my life to him as a member of this mission, so it only seems fair to me that I know who I'm giving that responsibility to.

(It's only partially a lie, you think.)

TG: you kno tons of shit about him tho

TG: like im guessin you knwo more about him than he knows bout u

TG: *know

TG: ur not the most open person either tbh

TT: Fair enough.

TG: relationships w/ people are two way streets dirk u gotta give to get

TG: if you dont its called stalkin

TT: That's a little harsh, don't you think? I'm not stalking him in any way shape or form.

TT: Unless we're speaking in terms of the literal definition, in which case I am, in fact, stalking him, simply due to the fact that I've been quietly walking behind him for quite a bit of time now.

TT: But that's not the point.

TG: this just in dirk strider has admitted to stalkin

TT: That's not what I meant and you know it.

TG: sure

TT: You're impossible.

TG: ur still talkin to me tho

TG: and about jakey no less

TG: what is it with u striders tryin to get me to spill the beans on my boys

TG: im not a fountain of knoledge u know

TG: *knowledge

TT: The word "know" and its expanded forms seem to be giving you a particularly hard time today.

TG: the keyboards out 2 get me

TT: Don't let it win. Wouldn't that be a fucking tragedy? Here lies Roxy Lalonde, done in by a computer keyboard.

TT: Not the most impressive way to go.

TG: it rlly would be kinda emberassin

TG: and ud be p fuckin lonely without me to tease you all the time

TT: Things would certainly be boring, that's for sure.

TG: ill do my best to triumph for ur sake then

TT: Your generosity knows no bounds.

TG: i kno rite?

You roll your eyes.

TT: What's this about multiple Striders asking about multiple boys, though? You're implying that something like this has happened before.

TT: And since there are only two of us, I can only assume you're referring to Bro.

TG: davey asked somethin similar a while back bout john

TG: wanted me to give him the inside scoop

TT: Interesting.

TG: im surprised u havent asked about him yet

TG: ts been like a week since you left

TG: *its

TG: ha finally a word that wasnt know

TT: You could have done that on purpose.

TG: but did i dirk?? ill never tell

TT: To answer your question, though, I haven't asked because there's no real need. Bro can take care of himself, and he's on the base where things are relatively isolated anyway. He's not in any danger.

TG: just cause we got a huge empty forest keepin things away from us doesnt mean were safe

TT: Comparatively, then.

TG: ofc im assumin you havent been messagin him either

TG: u could be and i wouldnt have any idea unless i went thru the chat logs

TT: To save you the trouble of doing so, I haven't.

TG: you guys r weird

TT: Bold words from a fourteen-year-old who grew up on a university campus yet still came out of the experience obsessed with wizards.

TG: not my fault the intriguing mechanics of fantasy literature goes right over ur head

TG: u cant even talk anyway you watch old cartoons on ur phone

TT: Not my fault the inspiring themes and captivating characters in ancient Japanese animation go right over your head.

TG: o shit im gettin roasted

TT: Someone call the nonexistent fire department. These burns are quickly turning into an inferno.

TG: lmao

TG: do u think when were older jokes like that wont make sense anymore

TT: Probably. And if there's ever a generation after us, they won't understand my savage humor either.

TG: true tragedy

TT: Indeed.

TG: u wanna hear somethin weird?

TT: Sure, why not.

TG: the postal system doesnt exist anymore

TT: Yeah? And?

TG: no no like thhe postal system doesnt exist anymore and like its not gonna ever exist

TG: i was thinkin about that earlier today

TG: nobodys ever gonna mail letters or packages or anythin ever again

TG: cause theres nobody to deliver them and theres nobody to deliver them TO u kno

TG: cause were all here

TG: isnt that kinda crazy to think about?

TT: That also means no more junk mail.

TG: lmao true

TT: I guess I never really considered that, though. The concept of a postal system just isn't necessary in society anymore, so, like the concept of a fire department, it will probably fade out from our cultural language and understanding over time.

TG: its weird

TT: Yeah, it's weird.

TG: i wonder what else were gonna lose

TT: We've all lost a lot already, don't you think?

TT: Friends, family, society. Morals and principles to govern our daily lives, common convenience, peace of mind.

TG: r u bein depressin

TG: no depressin meatphors on rolals watch

TG: im keepin that typo btw

TT: Meatphors.

TG: yes meatphors

TG: do what u want with that mental image im not takin it back

TT: So gracious.

TG: i kno

TG: but for real like weve lost a lot sure but ur missin the point here

TG: weve gained a lot too you knwo

TG: fuck

TG: *KNOW

TG: who needs a postal system anyway

TG: we were so lil when this whole thing happened that like do we even have a right to be dwellin on shit thats passed??

TG: the adults maybe do cause like that was their whole lives but THIS is OUR whole life

TG: weve lost friends and family and society and w/e else u were spoutin off

TG: but weve gained a lot too that we never woulda gotten if all this hadnt gone down

TG: like i lost my gma and everyone at skaia b4 but i got u and janey and jake as my new family

TG: and its the same for everyone else

TG: u there?

TT: I'm here. I'm processing, I suppose. You're impressively insightful for a fourteen-year-old.

TG: stfu ur only two years older than me

TG: and ur impressively gloomy for a 16 y/o

TT: Savage.

TG: try & catch these hands distri

At what point is the line between weird coincidence and leading a conversation drawn, you wonder? Somehow, maybe without realizing it, Roxy managed to touch on the exact topic weighing down on your mind for almost a week, now. You can't help but think it's partially your fault—the direction your messaging had taken, that is. If the past hadn't been on your brain, you never would have used the phrase "nonexistent fire department", whether subconsciously or otherwise. And if you hadn't, perhaps Roxy wouldn't have brought up her thoughts from earlier in the day. But then again, what if she hadn't been considering the absence of previously integral societal institutions in the first place? Would the conversation have gone in the same direction? You have no idea.

All you _do_ know is that, somehow, you needed this, even if you're not quite sure what that entirely means or what you'll do with the conversation as a whole. But it's a step in the right direction, maybe. A reminder.

Up ahead, Jake laughs at something Terezi has just said, and Slick mumbles some kind of begrudgingly amused response. Rufioh and Meenah share a chuckle that you realize must be at Eridan's expense, based on the way he's fuming. And you tap out one last message on your phone that you doubt she'll understand.

TT: Thanks, Rox.

 

* * *

**[7/4/37]**

Despite your intention to leave the subject alone for a while, by the time the tenth morning rolls around you've poked and prodded and pried at Jake so much that he's started outright avoiding you. The others are painfully aware of what you're doing, too, and Slick has pulled you aside more than once along the way to try and convince you to stop, even going so far as to say that you've basically ruined your own chances of going out on another mission after this. Cooperation within a team is crucial in the field, and all you've done is cause friction.

At this point, you're not even really sure why you're digging for answers anymore. The information would have no bearing on your ability to perform well in combat, and if anything it would only weaken your relationship with Jake more than it already has been. And simple curiosity, as much as you want to believe is a good reason, is really just a bullshit excuse to be an asshole.

It's early now, barely after sunrise—so barely, in fact, that the sky is still sort of hazy with the fog that always seems to roll across the mountains when you're not paying attention and flee when you are, and everything is vaguely damp with dew. You can hear the vague sound of birds in the distance, and there's a rustling through the trees that tells you the wind is starting to pick up and the mist will be gone in an hour or so. All in all, it's an incredibly peaceful sort of morning.

You're not quite sure what wakes you up at first, given that everyone else is still passed the fuck out in their respective sleeping areas, even the others who would normally be sensitive to the same low-frequency sounds you are. Rufioh is sprawled out on the bare ground, somehow having rolled off his sleeping tarp in the middle of the night, with one arm flailed across Eridan's face. The latter, surprisingly, seems completely unperturbed, and Terezi is still relatively dead to the world in her own nestle of blankets above your head. The others, too—Meenah, Slick, and—

Oh.

Jake isn't asleep, you see when you glance over in the direction of his palette. But now that you're slowly sliding into consciousness, you realize you probably should have expected that. If you remember correctly, he'd had the last watch last night, which means he should still be up and waiting for everyone else to greet the day before you set off around nine.

The fire is going again, you realize—not quite the same size as the ones you light in the evenings, but a fire nonetheless. Maybe that's what roused you? No, you think—it had to be something else. You're used to the sounds of fires enough now that it shouldn't bother you. It had to be something else, something unusual.

Something like the smell of coffee.

It's mingled in with the scent of burning wood and tinder, a rough, roasted sort of breeze that wafts over everything, but it's there. And you realize, then, that you can't see Jake. His things are folded neatly, already packed up and prepared for departure, but your team leader is nowhere in sight. That wakes you up more, dragging your lazy sort of awareness into the day, and as you mop sticky hair out of your face you sit up, careful not to make so much noise that you disturb anyone else.

You decide to follow the smell of coffee both in hopes of finding Jake and maybe getting a cup for yourself, as unusual as the treat is. It takes a moment to get your body completely moving, and as you stand, stretch, and shake out your dead left foot you realize that maybe there's a reason Jake isn't anywhere in sight. The two of you haven't spoken one-on-one in a few days, and you don't know if he's talked to anyone else outside discussing the tasks at hand, either. You want to believe it's stress from the mission now that you're only a week out from Missoula, but a part of you knows it's your fault, too. He's not the type to get angry and explode—instead, you've discovered that he's the kind of person who will isolate himself when he's upset.

For a moment, you wonder if you should leave him alone, but you're already awake anyway and if he doesn't want to speak with you that's fine—you'll just figure out where the coffee is and mind your own business until it's time to go.

First, you inspect the fire, and find that there's the smallest, weirdest fucking coffee pot you've ever seen sitting adjacent to the flames. It's a dull, scuffed silver, with an _avant garde_ sort of jointed handle, and the whole thing looks like a faceted hourglass that could fit in the palm of your hand. It looks barely large enough to make half a cup of coffee, much less two, so you resign yourself to getting nothing and waiting out the morning in disappointment instead.

Another rustle of wind fingers through the trees and you wonder if it's cold, a little put off by the fact that you can see it and feel it but there's no real temperature to the breeze. It rolls past, shaking one set of branches and then another, making the leaves hiss in a quiet sort of way that's almost relaxing. It's not as foreign a sound as it used to be—there weren't many trees in Houston at all, really—but it's still unusually nice.

One set of branches, however, catches your weirdly-acute peripheral attention when it moves in the opposite direction of the rest.

It's midway up the tree against which all of Jake's things are leaning, and at first you ignore it, thinking it's probably a bird or small animal scurrying around, but you keep watching anyway because the novelty of constantly being around _nature_ has yet to totally wear off, even so many months after leaving the city. A few moments later, a gust blows by again, and now that you're paying attention you catch a glimpse of tan and black and a different sort of green from the leaves themselves. It's not a bird.

The itch starts up again—the itch to _know_ —and before you have a chance to rationalize that this is probably the opposite of a good idea you're already carefully picking your way toward the base of the tree.

Jake either doesn't notice you or pretends not to, because he doesn't turn around until you've scaled almost all the way up to where he's sitting, wedged between three particularly thick branches halfway out from the tree trunk. And when he does see you, he just kind of raises his eyebrows and says, "You're up rather early," in a hushed monotone. There's a downright minuscule tin cup in his hands, barely the size of two shot glasses, and you figure that's where the pitiful helping of coffee must have ended up. How he managed to climb so high without spilling it, though, is an impressive mystery.

"The caffeinated nectar of the gods woke me up," you grunt back, and he hums in what might be apology. You decide to climb a little bit higher than where he's sitting, and perch on the branch above him so the two of you aren't _too_ close, but so he can still hear you if this turns into an actual conversation. So far, things aren't looking good on that front. After a moment of tense silence, you open your mouth again. "Is there a reason you're up here?"

"I thought it would be interesting to watch the sunrise. Couldn't see much through the fog, though." He's turned back to the skyline, and from where you're sitting you can just see over the tops of most of the surrounding trees. There are a quite few taller than the one you're both tangled in, but for the most part it looks like this is one of the larger natural formations in the area. It's enough to view the horizon, in any case. You wonder if he knew that when he climbed, or if it was just a strange coincidence.

"That sucks," you say, and he hums again.

"Was there something you needed?"

"Coffee."

He snorts a little at that, almost a laugh but not quite, and says, "You're welcome to have a bit of mine, though I can't imagine you'll like it very much." When you glance back down you see he's got an amused, mischievous sort of expression on his face, and he's holding that tiny-ass cup out to you. You raise your eyebrows because there's no way there's actually anything left in that thing—he's _definitely_ fucking with you—but you take it anyway and lo and behold, there's some kind of sand-colored, congealed glob sitting halfway to the top.

"What the fuck is this?"

"It's coffee," he replies, actually sort of chuckling this time. "Don't knock it 'til you try it, Strider."

You look at him, look at the cup, and then stoically cross yourself with your right hand (which sends him snorting again) before taking a sip—and promptly dying.

"That," you choke out, resisting the urge to cough, "is _not_ coffee."

He keeps chucking as he holds out a hand for the cup, and when you pass it back to him he takes a sip and somehow manages to maintain a perfectly neutral facial expression. "It certainly is."

"Liar. That's tar or some bullshit. Tar in taste _and_ consistency." You seriously consider climbing back down in search of water to wash out the weird, grainy, thick _thing_ that's still stuck to your teeth, somehow suicidally bitter and sweet all at once.

"It's Italian," he says, smug as shit as he holds the cup to his lips. "More for me if you don't have the snuff to enjoy it."

You roll your eyes. "By all means, take it. I actually have _standards_."

"Not my fault American coffee tastes like dirty water," he hums innocently.

"Dirty water or not, at least it's enjoyable."

He chuckles again, softer this time, but doesn't respond more than that. You think, then, that the conversation must be over—that he's finally remembered that he isn't talking to you, or that there's really nothing else to say. You feel like your banter's been cut short, like you could go back and forth for an hour and still not be satisfied, and belatedly you realize that the two of you _could_ at one time. Months ago, when you were still just messaging on the road. Part of you wants to get that easy sort of friendship back, but the rest of you knows that you've probably fucked things up too much to try.

You wonder, then, if you should apologize, but decide not to because apologizing would mean bringing the subject up in the first place, and ignoring it altogether seems like a much better plan.

Definitely.

The two of you sit up in the tree for maybe thirty minutes, maybe an hour, watching mist clear even as the overcast clouds stay firmly in place. Your leg falls asleep again, which sort of traps you until you can shift position and get the blood flowing so you don't fall trying to climb down, whenever that might be. Jake, somehow, stays almost perfectly still.

When eight am rolls around and your cell phone starts buzzing, telling you to wake up and get ready to leave, you glance down and see that everyone else has started rummaging around to hit the snooze alarm on theirs and the small fire Jake must have started hours ago has gone out. Based on how all other mornings have gone so far, it'll likely be another half hour before anyone actually decides to get up, but you decide you should probably pack your own things just in case.

You don't think you made a mistake climbing up here, really, but then again you're not entirely sure what you'd expected to come out of this. At the very least, you got Jake to speak with you, and that's something. You resign yourself to more well-deserved cold shoulders over the next week and start rustling around without a word, trying to find your balance so you can descend, when Jake finally, unexpectedly opens his mouth to speak. "My mother was from Italy, you know."

You freeze.

"What?"

His voice is quiet, and he's still not looking at you. "My mother, along with John and Jane's mother and Jade's father—they were all from Italy. Our grandparents, too. Jane took after her father in terms of complexion, though."

"So... you're from Italy, then?" you ask, sort of hushed, like if you start speaking too he'll stop.

He shakes his head. "No, as suspected I am, in fact, from the UK. I do speak a fair bit of Italian, though."

You blink at him, half out of muffled surprise and half because of the daylight. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you'll keep pestering me about it if I don't throw you a bone," he sighs, resigned, "and I'd like to be in top psychological condition when we reach Missoula."

"Oh."

He snorts, but there's no humor in the sound. "More than a week and all you have to say is _oh_?"

Suddenly, you're reminded of what Roxy had said, that relationships with people are two way streets—you've got to give to get, and you feel indefinably guilty. Because you're getting, now, finally; getting a free handout just because you wore him down, even if it's small, and all you've given is aggravation. You don't immediately respond. Instead, you hum, thinking, and then after a moment say, "I don't know where we're from. We're just American, I guess."

He looks at you, then, with his eyebrows raised. "You and Dave?" He sounds amused.

You hum again, and pause again, and then nod. "Yeah, me and Bro. Our—our dad never talked about family much."

As soon as the words are out of your mouth it's like you've swallowed an entire pint of Jake's shitty Italian sludge, because you feel your throat sort of close up and your face twist into what must look like a badly-masked sneer. Some wounds are better left scarred over, you think, and all at once you feel like you have a profound understanding of why Jake might not want to talk about _his_ past either. Maybe for the same reasons, maybe not.

Jake seems to pick up on the sudden shift in mood. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want," he says, and that makes you feel even more like a fucking hypocrite. Because that's the exact opposite of the mentality you've had throughout this entire trip.

"That's not fair and you know it," you say with a little more bite than you intend, maybe because you're thinking about _him_ or maybe because you're finally kind of pissed at yourself. Jake just shrugs.

Below, you hear Slick grunt, "Anyone seen Jake and Strider?" in a thick voice still rough from sleep, and a chorus of _nah'_ s rises up from the rest of the camp still bundled up and refusing to move.

You turn to Jake to say the two of you should head back down to join the others, but whatever's about to come out of your mouth chokes off in a kind of surprised wheeze when you hear Terezi mumble, "Maybe they're finally resolving all that sexual tension." You start coughing, having inhaled some of your own spit, as Jake just sort of looks at you, and you belatedly realize he can't hear a word they're saying.

Thank _God_.

The racket you're making isn't completely drowned out enough by the scandalized noises from everyone else below, and manages to catch the attention of Rufioh, who's blinking blearily up around him. Position now thoroughly compromised, you shake your head at Jake's curious, concerned look and start climbing down with a curt, "Time to go," in his general direction.

Ten feet from the ground Meenah grumbles, "What the fuck were you guys doing up _there_?" as she rolls up her blankets, and even though her tone gives off waves of annoyance she's got a gleam in her eye that tells you she and Terezi are in sick cahoots. You flip her off, and Jake, still totally oblivious, chastises you for being rude.

You flip him off too.

* * *

**[7/8/37]**

Whether intentionally or not, coffee in the mornings becomes a kind of ritual for you and Jake, regardless of whoever has the last watch of the night. The day after your first tree climbing escapade, you you'd gotten up early on your own, half curious about the sight Jake had been eager to see. Sunrises over the city skyline were one thing, but you'd never thought to watch them in a place like this. Slick, who had taken the last watch that morning, had waved off your explanation in the darkness, and you'd scaled the tallest nearby tree and settled in to wait.

You hadn't expected it, but moments before dawn, Jake had climbed up, too, rising up through the hazy gray and clinging, like the day before, to the branches just below you. He'd scolded you for wasting precious sleep, you'd done the same in turn, and you'd both chuckled softly at your shared masochism. And that, of course, had been that.

You hadn't spoken much that morning, and the sunrise hadn't been particularly glamorous shielded by the clouds, so when everyone below had started to wake you'd made a quiet sort of promise to yourself that you'd try again the next day. And the next day. And the next day, right up until you saw it for real. An unspoken determination that Jake must have picked up on, too, because he'd shown up again, too.

So the two of you sit, day after day, Jake drinking his shitty foreign coffee and you waiting in silence, enjoying the early morning air, right up until the day he _does_ decide to speak again.

"Do you think I can do this?"

Just like that first day, his voice is quiet, but there's a note of uncertain vulnerability to it that you don't think you've ever heard before. In all of your conversations before you'd left the base, the late-night repartees in your Infirmary room, he'd never once doubted his own ability to lead the mission. He'd always been boisterous and confident, laughing off your warnings even when you could see his exhaustion after training. And when you'd joined the morning sessions, too—the hellscape carved out for you by Nepeta and Equius—he'd always taken every challenge in stride.

You look at him, but he's staring down at his tin cup like it's the thing he's speaking to instead of you. "It's a little late for that, don't you think?" you hum, and he shrugs.

"Maybe. We're more than halfway there, now."

"Five or six days left, right?"

"Mhmm."

"I think you've done a pretty good job getting us this far. It's been uneventful, sure, but isn't that the best case scenario?"

He swings his legs a little, taking another sip of his pasty not-drink, and hums. "Makes me feel a bit like I'm cheating, though."

"What, because no one's died yet?" you snort, and he shoots you an unamused glare. "Or because you haven't gotten the chance to _keep_ anyone from dying?"

He gives a dry, self-depreciating chuckle. "Makes me sound like something of an arrogant scoundrel, now doesn't it?"

"Not really," you say. "More like you think you've got something to prove."

He blinks up at you like he'd never really considered that particular train of thought, and then he laughs again. "On the nose as usual, Strider."

You just shrug. "Who you're trying to prove whatever to, though, falls outside my realm of understanding. I guess I just haven't been around long enough." As much as you want to, you resist the urge to make your statement a question—to ask for details. You've been doing better, you think, at keeping your nose in your own business.

"That's the forty-million dollar answer, though, isn't it?" he replies. "To whom am I trying to prove something, and what exactly _is_ that something?"

"Only you know that, dude."

"I suppose that's true," he hums. You don't have a response to that, so you don't say anything, and a long moment of silence between the two of you passes before he speaks again. "You never told me why you asked John to let you come, you know."

Of course you didn't—you didn't tell anybody. You aren't even sure you really know, yourself. You try to remember the bullshit reason you gave John, what you'd said to convince him, but you all you can think to say is, "I guess I had something to prove, too."

Maybe it's the truth, maybe it's a lie, maybe it's a little bit of both. You hadn't wanted Jake to leave, but at the same time you'd known it wasn't your place to make him stay. And you hadn't wanted to sit around on your ass any longer than you already had been, but at the same time you'd known you'd already been through enough to warrant some rest for the first time in years. It had been for both of your sakes, you think—some misplaced concern you didn't quite understand, and some misplaced desire—

"To prove to your brother?"

—to prove you that were strong enough not to leave your Bro behind again. That you _are_ strong enough.

"I didn't ask _you_ about _your_ psychological motivations, you know," you mumble.

"I suppose _that's_ true, too" he says again, and a silence falls between you after that. You feel bad, almost, but you don't want to talk about what's going on in your head.

 _Relationships with people are a two way street_.

But then again, he never seems to want to, either. You wonder if that's good for the both of you, or if it's just easy—being closed up like that.

 _You have to give to get_.

Do you really want anything from this? You don't know that, either.

It seems like there's a lot you don't know lately, and the only common factor among all of the things escaping you seems to be Jake, like he's some kind of uncertainty catalyst. It makes you angry, almost, in an irrational sort of way. You'd been doing just fine before he came along. You'd been living your life systematically, surviving day after day because that's what you had to do. There had been some kind of routine, some kind of apathetic pattern to it all. And really, you think that hasn't changed—you're still afraid of danger, you're still worried about finding supplies, you're still focused on moving forward.

But there's a new place in your head, now. A place that has time to think of other things, where you can solve problems that aren't necessarily imperative to waking up so you can see another day. And for some reason, for some stupid fucking reason, Jake—Jake, with his tendency to avoid direct questions, with his shitty sayings, with his weird hero complex (the one that seems to run in his family, you think)—has decided to take up all the room better spent thinking of stable designs for small homes that can survive landslides, or a more efficient way to manage hydroelectric power, or anything else, really. _Anything_ else.

It irritates you to no end.

You want someone down below to wake up before you say something without thinking, or before you overthink things so much you _do_ say something, but it's still too early for the universe to take pity on you. And you don't think you deserve that pity, anyway. 

"People always get hurt trying to protect me, and I think—I don't know what I think," you mumble, staring out across the tree line. A single, finger-feathered bird of prey is circling high above some dead thing in the distance that you can't see, marking its territory against the mist-covered sunrise. "Maybe it's a test. If I can't prove I'm strong enough to do things on my own—make my own decisions and shit—then that's it, I'm just—I don't deserve to survive, I guess. There's no need for anyone to be in harm's way because of me because I'll be gone, and that's the best way to keep everyone else safe. And if I _am_ strong enough, then—then the same thing, I guess, because I'll be able to protect myself."

You don't look at Jake, but you can feel him staring at you, scrutinizing you. That's the most you've spoken to him all at once in a long time, you think, and you'd done it just so you could spill your fucking guts. You feel gross, almost, admitting whatever you've just admitted. It's just a haphazard collection of thoughts not really strung together by anything more than a common theme, but you're suddenly so tired—so, so tired—and the only thing you can think about is your brother, his voice breaking as he screams at you to go, to run away, even while the monsters are closing in from behind. How he'd almost died—how he _had_ died, and then been brought back to life—your whole world.

(And then you start thinking about _him_ , too, no matter how much you want to forget.)

Jake hums quietly, maybe trying to get your attention, but you don't turn toward him. After a moment he sighs and says, "That sounds just a pinch near suicidal, you know. Like you're taking this mission as a life-or-death test of courage."

You give a dry snort. "It's the logical way of thinking. Survival of the fittest—post-apocalyptic utilitarianism. The sacrifice of one for the good of the many. If it's better for the people around me in the long run, if I don't deserve to live because I'm not strong enough, then I'm better off not living at all. Alternatively, if I _am_ , then I _do_ , and so on."

"It seems like you've be mulling over this for quite some time."

 _Yeah, for years_ , you think. But instead you say, "You ever had someone die for you?"

Jake is quiet for a long moment and you wonder if you've said the wrong thing, or if you shouldn't have asked at all, because you've figured out that he would rather talk about other people than himself. But you need a change of topic, even for just a moment, even just slightly. You wonder if he's even going to answer.

(The bird of prey—a hawk or a falcon, maybe—is joined by a second, and they swoop through the sky in a kind of rhythmic pattern that's almost calming, not quite interacting but not quite ignoring each other, either.)

Then, after a full few minutes, Jake speaks again. "My grandmother, I think. I don't quite remember what happened, both because I was young and because things were a mile beyond chaotic at the time. It's mostly feelings, now, the things I _can_ recall. Being so bloody terrified—I'd run out of ammunition and my hands were shaking, I believe; I couldn't reload properly. Jade shielded me with her body, and then our grandmother jumped in front of both of us before we could get seriously hurt. And she didn't make it."

His voice doesn't waver, like he's thought it over a thousand times and come to terms with what happened, and you wonder if someday you'll be able to do the same with some of the things that have happened to _you_. Not think of them without crying, because you don't cry—but think of them without getting angry at yourself for needing to be saved.

The only thing that comes to mind is a muffled, "I'm sorry, dude," that doesn't sound as sincere as you'd like it to, maybe because you're not used to apologizing or maybe because you can't think of anything else to say and _I'm sorry_ doesn't sound like it should be enough.

But Jake just kind of laughs that same empty laugh you've heard too often over the last two weeks and says, "I'm sorry, too," but it doesn't feel directed at you. It's like he's apologizing for himself to someone you can't see. "What about you? You ever had someone die for you?"

You hate the fact that the world is so fucked that talking about the people who've died for your sakes feels almost like a normal conversation topic. Like death doesn't mean the same thing it used to. And you hate that you'd walked into the question by asking it first, because you don't want to lie—not about this—but you also don't want to talk about it. But you feel obligated to, now, because Jake's broken what seems like his own golden rule not to talk about things that have happened in the past, too, and that's your fault.

You hum and watch the birds for a moment, and Jake sits quietly, waiting. And then when you finally _do_ speak he doesn't say a word.

"I don't know if I can count Bro, really, because he's still around. _I_ do, but I got lucky, I guess. Thanks to John he survived." You pause and run a hand through your hair. "But when I was younger, back in Houston, our dad—our shitty fucking dad—he got hurt because of me. And Bro had to—" you swallow and look down at your hands and ah, yes, there it is—you're shaking a little. Fantastic. "Bro says it was the one and only good thing our dad ever did in his life, but I think in some ways he was just trying to justify what happened. But it was my fault. My own _brother_ had to _kill_ our fucking _father_ because of _me_." You choke out a laugh and it sounds strangled even to you. "How fucked up is that?"

Jake is silent, then, while you sit there and shake, trying to control your anger—trying to reign in the waves of acute self-hatred you've tried so hard for so long to bottle up. You want to laugh again, because you'd been right and wrong at the same time. You'd thought this trip would ruin your relationship with Jake, but all it's done is ruin _you_.

" _Chi mora mor', e chi camba cambe_."

"What?"

"It's a Molisan saying, from the Province of Campobasso. Who dies, dies; and who lives, lives. I think a more accurate translation would likely be _life goes on_ ," Jake says quietly.

"But is this really living?"

"You're alive, aren't you?"

"In the literal sense, yes," you mumble.

"Then that should be enough."

"Lofty statement from a guy who's out to prove just as much as I am."

Jake chuckles, then, and when you finally do turn to face him he's nodding a little. "What can I say? I'm something of a hypocrite, it seems. Although I'm under the impression, now, that our reasonings differ somewhat."

"How so?" you say, and only after you've asked the question do you realize that's probably crossing some kind of line, given how much he's avoided the topic.

He hums for a moment, and then shrugs. "Your father wasn't a good man, was he?" You shake your head in answer, knowing you should have expected a question for your own question. "But you don't define yourself by his actions, correct?" Again, you shake your head.

"Bro raised me, not him. Blood relation or not, he was only my dad on legal documents."

Jake nods again. "I suppose, then, that's what I'm trying to prove."

You don't have a response to that, because you don't quite understand what he means—or, maybe, you just don't want to. The two of you sit there like that, nestled up in the tree, until once again the day starts and your trek continues just the same as it has for the last two weeks.

 _Life goes on_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Theme song is [_When You Break_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JYd7-TNyto) by Bear's Den. The chapter title _Tale il Padre, Tale il Figlio_ means _like father, like son_ in Italian. 
> 
> Fanart corner time! Please, please, please check out [**THIS AWESOME PICTURE OF DAVE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/142989364027/) and [**THIS OTHER RAD PICTURE OF DAVE**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/142931756137/) by tumblr user spaced-out-witchy, and [**THIS SUPER PICTURE OF JOHN**](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/post/143268879457/) by tumblr user queerava. Thanks guys!! These are awesome, and they're all up on my wall. <3
> 
>   * Check out the [Freightstuck Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI)! Lots of cool stuff there.
>   * Check out [my blog](http://egbertiian.tumblr.com/)! There's all kinds of cool Freight stuff in the sidebar, including 8tracks playlists, fanart, and more!
>   * If you have anything you'd like me to see (like fanart or long posts or a shoutout) stick it in the [freightstuck](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck) tag on tumblr!
>   * Thank you for reading! You're awesome! 
> 



	22. I Don't Know If I'm Ready

 

**[7/14/37]**

**DAVE: GET YOUR ASS KICKED == >**

"Bend your knees, fuckwad. You're literally—oh my God, you're going to fall over backwards if you do that. Have you _ever_ thrown a punch in your miserable goddamn life? Straight—don't duck left, _duck straight, you idiot—_ " Karkat shouts from over the wooden fence, looking seconds away from a fucking anyeurism as he yells at you across the (relatively) empty training grounds.

"Never straight, always forward," you wheeze, and then wheeze again when Nepeta's foot lands dead-center on your diaphragm.

"If you have time to make jokes about your sexuality, you have time to focus," she snorts.

You don't have a good response to that because you're too busy trying to keep your dinner-breakfast-lunch-you-don't-even-know-anymore-your-meal-schedule-is-so-whacked from seeing the light of day a second time, so you just kind of stay on your knees, dying.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER and you are TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD. Three weeks ago, your ONLY LIVING RELATIVE and YOUNGER BROTHER, DIRK, left with a team of highly-skilled individuals to scout for supplies in MISSOULA, MONTANA, and since then you have been doing your best _not_ to sit on your ass. Rather, you've done an excellent job making progress in the MYSTICAL ART OF GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED instead. No one told you that adjusting your combat style to a new body would be this hard, but here you are, fucking suffering.

John, who's standing next to the boiling pit of rage and frustration that Karkat has slowly become over the last hour, looks like he's having the time of his _life_ watching you get thrashed into next week. No sympathy from anyone, it seems.

"You're all heartless bastards," you choke out, doubled over while Nep bounces beside you, raring to go.

"Heartless bastards who're trying to keep you from getting killed," she replies sweetly. It sounds sinister, you think—like _she's_ enjoying this, too. Typical.

"Yeah, if _you_ don't kill me first."

John laughs again, loud and hearty, and the sound carries across the grass. "Try not to mess him up too bad, Nep. I'm working with a limited stock of stuff in the Infirmary until Jake gets back." You gesture his way and nod vigorously, mouthing _please_ as Nepeta just shakes her head.

"No can do, boss man. If he gets hurt, it's his own fault."

She's behind you, now—out of sight—and suddenly a kind of all-consuming paranoia floods your brain, taking control of the muscle groups that were keeping you even slightly upright. You start to pitch forward just as you feel the air behind your head shift, throwing yourself to the ground before your brain catches up with your body—and when you look up, Nepeta staring down at you with an expression of genuine surprise, leg still raised, foot exactly where the back of your neck had just been. "This is sadism," you say, still kind of holding your gut.

"Welcome to a meritocracy," she bites back, suddenly grinning. "Not bad, but you're still at the bottom of the food chain."

Karkat makes another unintelligible noise from across the field and yells, "He fell over! That wasn't—Christ!"

You crane your head back with every intention of throwing him a middle finger, but when you glance his way you see that John is patting Karkat's shoulder, trying to keep him from pulling his own hair out in frustration. "Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt, okay? It could have been a little bit of both."

"Damn, you sure know how to boost a guy's confidence," you mumble. Nep nudges you with her foot, none-too-gently but not quite a whap, either. You wave her off. "Yeah, yeah—I'm gettin' up."

The rest of the morning continues on like that, with Nepeta throwing blows, Karkat throwing profanity-filled coaching from the sidelines, John throwing laughter at the whole situation, and you throwing up—or, at least, trying not to. Eventually, maybe half an hour later, everyone else who's scheduled to work out today starts to trickle into the area, signaling the relative end of your pre-training training and the start of yet another round of torture. Thankfully, Nep lets you take a little bit of a break after Equius arrives and the others start their warm-ups, and you limp over to the sidelines as gracefully as possible.

John hands you a bottle of water and leans forward on the fence so that his bodyweight is supported by the wood. "Not bad for two weeks' worth of progress, I'd say," he grins as you start chugging the drink like it's the fountain of youth itself, ignoring the fact that half of it doesn't even make it to your mouth and instead soaks the front of your shirt. Not that anyone paying attention could tell, given how soaked in sweat you are right now.

Warily, you eye the fence, wondering if you have the energy to make it to the other side, or if it's even worth it to expend the effort in the first place. You're just going to have to climb back into training area in a little while anyway, and the only merit to actually stepping across would be more distance between you and Nepeta, and maybe less distance between you and John—whose presence has, over the past few weeks, become oddly calming despite the rocky start to your relationship. You've avoided thinking too much on why you've come to enjoy spending time in his quiet lab, writing it off as simply that—the quiet—and you don't particularly plan to in the future. Too much work.

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Congratulations, you've leveled up from literal fetus on the battlefield to a thumb-sucking infant."

"Which means he's got a functional respiratory system and developed joints now. What an achievement."

"Shut the fuck up, John."

You come up for air after half the bottle is drained and let out an impressive belch, which sets Karkat off making disgusted noises and John chuckling yet again. "Shut up, both of you," you grumble. "If I didn't already know what death feels like, I'd say this was it."

John snorts. "That's a little overdramatic, don't you think?"

"Oh, yeah? I'd like to see either of you go up against that chick and come out on top," you shoot back, and John side-eyes Karkat, who you think _maybe_ blushes, but you can't really be sure. "In a _fight_. Christ, I can't believe _I'm_ calling someone out on immaturity."

You get more laughter from John at that—he seems to be doing a lot of it lately, you think.

(It's nice.)

" _I_ sure as hell am _not_ about to fight our resident cat lady," John snorts. "I've seen what she does to bears."

You raise your eyebrows. "But you'll throw me in the ring with her?"

"Of course!"

"You're breaking my goddamn heart."

Instead of responding to you, John nudges Karkat with his elbow and receives a glare in return. "You missed a choice opportunity to say _but neither of you have seen what she does in bed_."

"I hope you stab yourself with a toxic bacteria strain in your lab and die."

Rather than looking offended by the statement, John just stands straight and throws an arm around Karkat's shoulders in one sweeping motion. "Me too!" he says brightly, and the statement catches you off guard—both because of the way he says it and because you can't tell if he's joking or not.

Karkat, however, remains unfazed. "I'm not going to fight her, either. Been there, done that—stop, don't give me that look—"

"Been there, done _—_ "

"If you finish that statement you have to fucking spar with Equius or so help me Go—"

" _—her_."

Karkat roars, face _definitely_ heated now, and throws his hands up, catching the arm John has around his shoulder and gripping it tight.

The only thing you have to thank for catching what happens next is your weird, unnatural ability to focus on things so closely they seem to almost slow down, because you think anyone else would blink and miss it. Karkat heaves, hoisting John's massive, muscular weight enough to lift him almost bodily off the ground with the apparent intention of throwing him over the fence; John looks surprised for a moment, but manages to catch himself on the top rung of the barrier mid-air, wincing when the pressure travels up to his right wrist but not enough to let go. For a moment, he hangs there, balanced near-vertically on the fence with his legs half-bent in some terrible rendition of a handstand, and then in the next instant he's landing heavy on his feet in the grass, slightly unbalanced but very much upright.

Karkat doesn't even look surprised.

(You, however, have absolutely no idea what to think.)

John rolls his wrist a few times, holding it gingerly with his left hand but otherwise looking unhurt and not even the least bit winded. "Not bad," he says. "You still can't pick me up fast enough, though."

"I'm sorry I can't lift the equivalent of a baby elephant," Karkat shoots back, along with a middle finger in John's direction. "Go get your ass kicked and leave me alone."

You glance back and forth between the two of them—Karkat looking more amused than offended, maybe, and John with a kind of thoughtful look on his face, still holding his wrist. And then, suddenly, John shrugs. "Might be interesting, and I could use the exercise."

He turns around, scanning the small crowd huffing and puffing on the grass, blissfully unaware of what's about to go down. _You're_ not even sure what's about to go down, really—but by the look on Karkat's face, you can tell it will at least be interesting. "Good fucking luck," he mumbles, either mid-wince or trying to hold back laughter, you're not entirely sure.

You nearly jump when John's voice rings out over the field. "Zahhak, spar with me!"

Everything and everyone comes to a definable screeching halt at the shout, and John—usually in one of two modes, quiet or all business—pulls off his jacket with a grin.

You see Equius and Nepeta share a look, and then Nep glances over at Karkat, who sort of shrugs with his palms up in a universal gesture of _whatever the fuck, I don't care_. Then she, of course, breaks into a wicked smile, too. "Change of plans, guys," she calls to the day's trainees. "Looks like today we get a demonstration."

Your ears pick up on a few hushed murmurs as a wave rolls through the dozen-plus-some people on their asses, frozen mid sit-up.

"You ever seen them—?"

"Has he—?"

"—during the attack last month, but—?"

"—usually on his own, right?"

"—used to, but not so much in the last—"

Karkat clicks his tongue, snapping your distracted concentration back to the matter at hand, and you turn to see him shaking his head. "It's his own fault if he breaks his arm again," he mumbles, so low that not even any Cured on the field bothering to pay attention would be able to hear it. You remember, then, that hardly anyone knows about John's slowly-healing injuries. Over the past three weeks, his body has done its best to repair itself, you think—or at least that's what you've noticed by the dwindling strips of nasty, ripped cloth and blood-faded gauze in his garbage during your time sitting under his window. He doesn't talk about them much, though, and neither do you. The scars on his face (the ones that hurt to look at, sometimes; the ones you gave him) are still there—scars—but you haven't seen enough of him to gauge how well the rest of his wounds are doing.

Suddenly, a spike of worry sits itself in the pit of your gut, echoed by the muted realization that John lacks any real sense of self-preservation.

But he looks _confident_ stepping on to the field, stretching his arms behind his back. Confident and... playful, almost? "He's finally lost it," you say, sort of hushed.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Karkat shake his head again. "He used to always be like this, only way fucking worse. When we roomed together back in New York, he was the king of terrible shitty jokes. Thought he ruled the fucking world with a bucket of water balanced on the frame of a half-open door. It's fucking bizarre seeing it again."

"You guys lived together?" you ask, surprised. You hadn't expected that—it's rare that anyone talks about their lives before all this, and the realization that he and John have known each other at _least_ that long puts some things, you think, in perspective.

Karkat hums, staring out over the fence as Equius stands, looking confused but not entirely opposed to throwing down with Skaia's beefy pseudo-leader. The refugees start shuffling to the edge of the field, ushered on by Nep, still grumbling amongst themselves about what's brewing. It must be something special, you think—watching John fight. Or Equius, although you've witnessed his swings before in training. John, though; you've never seen him do much of anything violent, really.

Karkat's voice gets your attention again.

"Yeah," he says, making a vague motion with one hand barely unfolded from his crossed arms. He doesn't elaborate, and you don't ask. "The important thing is that he's smiling, happy, whatever."

You look back at John, then—all grins and stretches and warmth and mischief—and think with a hazy sort of recollection about the emotionless man who'd wordlessly taken blood samples and re-bandaged your wounds with a firm, cold grip. The man who had let out full-bodied bellows of laughter at something as simple as a card game, and who had also stood in front of hundreds of people, sliced his own arm wide open, and said _we would_ not _lie to you_ with so much authority and finality you think the earth might have stopped spinning at the sound of his voice.

You've come to expect the unexpected with him, you think—especially over the past few months. Who you'd perceived him to be is not who he is, but you've yet to fully figure who _that_ is, either. You don't know if it really matters, though.

"He's got a lot to him, I guess," you say, deciding to let it go for now. Briefly, you wonder if you'd joined the compound too many years too late to fully appreciate the wide range of people encompassed in the one body that is John Fucking Egbert, or if you'd arrived right on time.

* * *

Now that he's dressed only in a plain white T-shirt and jeans, having shed his jacket in pursuit of what you assume might be mobility, you can see that most of John's visible wounds _have_ healed significantly. The layer of gauze under his shirt that you've become accustomed to seeing over the past month is, for once, not present—there's no odd sort of padding making his back and chest look unusually plush. That does, however, make the darker parts of his healing injuries all the more visible through the thinning, ancient cotton.

You try not to focus on that, though, (you're learning not to fixate on tiny details, but it's something you still haven't quite mastered) and instead take in the scene as a whole.

John stretches, pulling his arms behind his back and then across his neck once, twice, three times. Equius rolls his shoulders and reties the band holding his long hair back out of his face. John bounces on the balls of his feet, shaking out his hands and taking the tension out of his wrists. Equius bends his legs, limbering up his quads and calf muscles. Back and forth, back and forth—they're focusing on different muscle groups, you realize; it speaks to what might be a difference in their fighting styles.

"Are you quite sure about this?" Equius says, although for some reason he sounds like he already knows the answer, eyeing John's posture and demeanor.

"Wouldn't have suggested it if I wasn't," John replies.

And then, finally, they're both still.

A hush falls over the crowd, and you take in their postures, confirming that no—they don't go at combat the same way. John's feet are planted firm on the ground, legs bent into a semi-crouch but his weight very much centered. Equius, on the other hand, has his body tilted forward, balanced on the balls of his feet.

Nepeta, who's across the field with the other trainees, hops up on the fence in one swift motion, and like some unspoken signal is passed to her she suddenly calls, "Anyone ever seen a bear and a mountain lion duke it out?"

Without thinking, you shake your head, like she's talking directly to you. Out of the corner of your vision you see Karkat turn to look at you, an unreadable expression on his face. But you've already been sucked in, entranced by the promise of a show before the curtains have even been drawn. A performance, a dance, a duel.

You don't get a warning. The lights don't dim, the audience doesn't murmer and hush, the opening credits don't roll.

Equius just lunges.

He leaps at John, weight and force instantly rippling up from his legs to his shoulder to his fist, stepping forward to add momentum into the right jab. No test run or gentleness—you can see his muscles moving, and he isn't holding back. It's quick, precise, calculated, and _powerful._

John doesn't even flinch.

The moment Equius starts moving, John does, too—like they'd both heard the same inaudible signal, or like he'd been able to react instantaneously. He drops his weight low, ducking just under Equius's fist and moving forward instead of dodging back. Feet planted, arms wide and ready, he meets Equius's incoming weight like a brick wall, instantly locking his hands behind Equius's back and offbalancing him by fucking _lifting him up in the air_.

Like time slows before your eyes, you catch every moment of the exchange as though you're watching a series of freeze-frame stills. Equius's eyes go wide, mouth agape as all of the wind is knocked out of his chest—surprised and pained. And John—John hasn't stopped grinning. His arms flex in time with his legs as Equius's feet leave the ground, and then he throws his weight to the side, tilting his opponant off balance while still maintaining control with the hold.

Before Equius can even react, John has him careening toward the ground.

It's over before it even begins—

(Somewhere in the distance, you hear Nepeta call, "There it is! The bear hug takedown!")

—or so you think.

Equius catches his weight with his hands, then uses his new, lower position to sweep a leg out into the back of John's knees. Your first instinct—your gut reaction—is to call out a warning, but suddenly Karkat flicks your shoulder and you realize you've been gripping the fence in front of you so hard you've started cracking the wood. What the fuck.

"Breathe," he says.

But you can't, because you're watching John, taking in every movement, every expression, every twitch and chest heave. Equius sucessfully throws John off balance, and his legs start to buckle in a way that has you panicking almost instantly.

You don't like this, you decide. You don't like being able to see everything, and, specifically, being able to see _this_. There's too much happening too fast, and for some reason the feeling is so, so different from when you yourself were being attacked in a spar.

(Nep's still yelling, saying something about a _push sweep_ , and there's a kind of buzzing in the background that you're too focused on the fight to place.)

John starts going down, and you're less than an instant from calling out when you realize that he's not pitching forward onto his knees like he _should_ be. Instead, he's falling _backwards_ , and he hasn't stopped _fucking grinning_. He lands hard on his upper arms, but his back never hits the ground, and for a split second he's frozen in a kind of awkward table-like position, back arched and stomach up. As you watch, Equius's expression shifts from muted victory (because you've never seen that guy make any _exaggerated_ facial movements) to mild surprise, and the fractional pause is enough of an opening for John to make his next move.

John uses the fact that they're both still in the grass to his advantage, and with one great heave he flips his body over from the right, hooking his legs around Equius's neck just before his right arm lands in the grass and secures him in what could be a plank if there wasn't a choking dude locked between his calves. You see him wince a little, just a fraction, when his injured arm gets the brunt of the impact, but he doesn't stop—he keeps rolling until he's on his back again, securing his hold on Equius.

"Holy shit," you exhale, still half holding your breath, and Karkat just snorts next to you. There's a momentary pause in the match that seems, to you, like it's been going on for an eternity—but which, in reality, has only lasted a few seconds. Equius squirms and scrambles at his neck, and John lets out a winded laugh, loud and carefree enough to carry across the field. His chest is heaving, and there's sweat forming on the front of his shirt; you can both see and smell it, which surprises you.

But the fight isn't over yet.

Equius's arms aren't pinned, and he gets a hold on John's legs. In an impressive display of strength (one you think you should have expected) he lifts John enough to loosen the grip on his neck, and within seconds he's on his feet again. Instead of lunging at him while he's down, though, Equius jumps back a few steps, coming to rest in a defensive stance with one hand on his neck. He's still trying to catch his breath, you think. Or at least that's what it looks like to you.

John takes his time standing back up, seemingly convinced that Equius isn't going to attack again just yet. The two of them just stay there, facing off, chests heaving, and you can't look away.

(Nepeta's yelling again, this time about rounds and something along the lines of _Don't kill him, John_.)

The moment passes and suddenly the two on the field are moving agian, this time simultaneously, this time _fast_. Equius goes for another punch, the same right jab, and you wonder if it's a predictable move of his. A tell. But at the last moment he fakes and switches to a right hook aimed directly at John's jaw—

—that John blocks with a right guard.

He's in a different stance, now, you realize. Unlike before, when he'd had his weight planted firm and center, he's on the balls of his feet like Equius, shoulders hunched and back tucked slightly.

Again, he grimaces when the blow hits his right arm, but he doesn't stop.

Equius doesn't miss a beat, either.

Jab after jab, hook after hook—suddenly they're trading and blocking blows in close quarters, faster than you've ever seen either of them move. John lands a hit to Equius's solar plexis and one of Equius's fists connects with the side of John's head, but neither stop.

(The buzzing in the background gets louder, louder, louder.)

It's a rapidfire massacre, the two of them shifting around the field in total concentration, locked in barely-controlled combat. You've only ever seen John this focused when he's working, totally enthralled in some lab machine, and it's mesmerizing. But his expression is different—his grin is gone now, replaced by a kind of excited determination you've never pictured on his face before. It's not the near-defeated stubbornness he sometimes wears while pouring over those weird Jell-O slabs all over his room; this is, you think, strength. Strength in more than one sense of the word.

Just when you think the two of them could go on like this forever, Equius—

Something hits the fence next to you hard and fast, with enough force to shake the wood still gripped tight under your palms, and you jump, attention snapping away from the fight and zero-ing in on what's there.

Roxy bounces next to you like windup toy, face flushed just as Jane rushes up behind her. "Oh my gosh! _Oh my gosh!_ " Roxy gasps, grinning, eyes fixed on the fight.

"Oh my gosh, indeed," Jane replies with less enthusiasm, but clearly no less intrigued.

You blink at them, wondering why they're here, momentarily distracted—and in that moment you _really_ look up at the Training Grounds as a whole.

There are more people standing around the opposite fence, now; more than just the trainees. _A fuckton_ of people. You spot a few familiar faces in the crowd—the crowd that you now realize is the source of the buzzing; murmuring and cheering and chattering—and wonder how the word got out about this. Clearly, it wasn't planned. Maybe someone had run off to spread the news? But you can't imagine tearing your eyes away from this for even a second.

And yet, you have, and somehow in that moment you've managed to miss a crucial part of the fight—which you realize the second you hear John let out a pained wheeze.

He's doubled over, clutching his side, and there's an angry burgandy stain smeared where you know for a fact a makeshift stitch substitute used to be. (God, that had been fun—sitting on the other side of the locked door listening to John take the staples out of that fucking mess of a half-healed wound, not allowed inside but unable to make yourself leave for some stupid reason.)

Equius is frozen, and a sudden hush falls over the crowd, but John just grunts and stands straight, motioning him forward. John rolls his shoulders and drops low again, fists up, and that's when you realize the stain on his shirt isn't spreading. Picking up on the hesitation in his opponant, John says, "It's just scab tissue. I'm not dying."

Equius cocks his head to the side and frowns. "I do not wish to harm you."

And at that, John snorts. "You really think you could hurt me? I'm _pretty_ sure I'm winning right now." He turns his head toward the crowd behind Nepeta, then, and calls, "Nep, I'm winning, right?" with a lopsided grin.

Without missing a beat, Nepeta laughs, and just like that—with John's smile and Nep's easy cackle—the tension in the crowd disperses. In the time it takes her to respond, "No shit, Sherlock," you realize he's done it again. Picked up on exactly what everyone needs to hear and verbalizing it.

A few weeks ago, it had been a bold statement with a knife to his own arm, and today it's a lighthearted, teasing joke.

Next to you, you hear Jane hiss, "I'm going to kick his butt," and Roxy giggles.

The rest of the round (because apparently they're sparring in rounds, using their own system, not the one fights in training are based on, if what Nep keeps calling out is any indication) is much calmer, you think. The fierceness between the two of them has eased up a little, and when John finally pins Equius a second time, it's after a solid fifteen minutes of what looks like a violent version of tag. He ends up sitting on top of Equius's back with both of his opponant's wrists held in one hand, head thrown back in a righteous, ringing victory laugh.

When Nepeta calls the match, a cheer goes up through most of the crowd (as well as a few grumbles, which tell you some people had been betting againt him) and John stands. He helps Equius to his feet and then starts posing dramatically, eating up the hoots and hollars of everyone gathered. Only when Nepeta ushers (chases) him off the field does he finally stop, and he hops the fence over into the throng, all smiles and laughs. As you watch, people reach to pat his arms, elbow him, congratulate him, and he shakes hands and thanks everyone by name.

Whether he realizes it or not, you think, he was a born leader. From your perspective, at least. You suddenly feel more like an outsider here than you ever have, standing so far away from this tight-knit group that's survived here, together, for so long.

Off to the side, Nepeta throws Equius into a headlock and ruffles his hair, and they laugh in time with one another. Low and high, perfectly in tune. Karkat sighs and climbs over the fence to join them, and when you look to your other side you see that Jane and Roxy have already started making their way around the perimeter of the Training Grounds toward John.

Dirk's absence feels poignant, then. Heavy and cold all at once.

You're surrounded by people, but you're so, so alone.

* * *

You end up sitting quietly on the fence, waiting for the excitement of the match to die down so regularly scheduled training can resume, but after a few minutes of dragging your hand-me-down sneakers through the dirt you hear Nepeta call, "Dave, you're done for the day. Get some rest," in a surprisingly soft tone of voice. You must look tired, you think. You _are_ tired.

When you glance up, she's still on the ground wrestling Equius, but her eyes are on you. Karkat is sort of hovering over the both of them, half-heartedly trying to pull the pair apart so they can get back to their jobs. He turns to you when she speaks, and then, after a moment, nods. "Yeah, you're done."

You swing your legs back over the fence and drop to the other side, shrugging. "Fine with me," you say, and it's quiet, too. More so than you intend. You throw a limp wave over your shoulder, shove both hands into your pockets, turn your back, and start shuffling toward the main buildings.

Dirk is still on your mind, and the only thing you can take comfort in is the fact that you'll get to talk to him tonight—or at least hear how he's doing. You wonder if you should have reached out to him more, messaged him at least once over the past few weeks, but you don't want to be overbearing. John had been right, you think—he might be a kid, but he's strong; you _know_ he's strong. And you still aren't sure what the right thing to do is, not after you've nearly attacked him twice. You have no idea what he thinks of you anymore. (And you're a little afraid to find out.)

You kick that thought in the balls and try to focus on something else.

Like food.

Halfway through a mildly irritating internal debate about whether you should go track down a meal while the Cafeteria is relatively empty (most of the morning crowd is at the Training Grounds, you think, still fawning over John) or just make your way back to bed, though, you hear rapid footsteps thudding up behind you in the grass. For a fleeting moment you feel a strange sort of misplaced hope that it's John, but there's not enough weight behind the thunder.

"Dave! _Davey!_ " Roxy half-yells as she skids to a stop next to you, nearly tripping in the process. Without thinking, you reach out to catch her, but she hops a little and flashes you a massive grin, righting herself before you get the chance.

"Sup," you say.

" _Sup,_ " she mimics. You haven't stopped walking, and she's keeping pace with you, now, skipping alongside you. Something seems off for a moment, and it takes you a second to realize that Jane isn't with her for once. Maybe she'd stayed back with John? Before you can ask, though, she starts speaking again. "Are you gonna go do anything important?"

You raise your eyebrows at her. "Shower, probably. And then sleep. Both of those are, like, at least _somewhat_ essential to living, so I'd say they're important."

"Lame. Come to the kitchen with me instead!" She's beaming at you so bright that you can't help but think the look borders on mischevious.

"I've been rolling around in the dirt for an hour, Rox, are you sure you want my unwashed—though still _totally_ bangin'—bod in the same place y'all are cooking food?" you reply, shoving both hands back in your pockets.

She hums, maybe taking your (very valid) point into consideration, and then she must come to some sort of earth-shattering revalation because in seconds that grin you absolutely _do not_ trust is back in full force. "You don't smell _that_ bad," she says. "In my opinion, at least. If Mom says you gotta get out, though, that's fair."

"I don't actually have a choice, do I?" you sigh, not entirely willing to go based on principle alone, but well aware you have nothing better to do, anyway.

"I can't _possibly_ imagine why you wouldn't want to spend time with _me_ ," she snorts back, skipping ahead just a little and then turning around so she's walking backwards in front of you. Keeping an eye on you so you can't bail, probably. Cheater.

You have a weird feeling you should be mentally preparing yourself for battle... or something.

* * *

As expected, the Cafeteria is almost completely empty. It's not _quite_ time for the majority of the morning crowd to roll in, and the early risers you've gotten used to either watching from your window or the Training Grounds are all still back at the field, fawning over their champion. Roxy weaves around tables and chairs, making a bee-line for the back room, and you can already smell the potent scent of warm food wafting out through the entire building. Your stomach rumbles.

Also as expected, Rose is standing in front of the massive industrial griddle, poking at sizzling piles of grated... potatoes? (Some sort of poor man's hashbrown thing, maybe) with an equally impressive spatula.

Feferi is there, too, just opening up one of the enormous ovens as you turn the corner. You spot at least three pans of roasted meat inside.

Both turn around as Roxy makes her grand entrance—shouting _I'm back!_ as loud as humanly possible—along with the two others, both one of whom catch you by surprise. Cronus, who you'd been under the impression usually works afternoons, and _Gamzee_.

"Yo! My cherry brother!" he calls with wide smile. He has a bowl in his hands that's filled to the brim with some kind of beige, vomit-esque slop, and when he waves at you with it, he sloshes some of the... stuff onto the floor. Cronus makes a sort of comical half-dive like he's going to catch the bowl itself if it falls, but given that it never _actually_ hits the ground he just sort of lurches uncomfortably and then stands there with his arms out like he isn't sure what to do. He looks unbelievably stressed.

You kind of blink at them both, belatedly nodding at Gamzee with a kind of muted, "Sup, dude," and then look at Roxy. "Is this why—?"

She shakes her head, that _look_ still in her eyes. "No, no. Fun bonus, though!"

And yeah, actually—it _is_ kind of a fun bonus. Gamzee seems... Good? Healthy, almost. More so than you've seen him in years, and _exponentially_ more than the last time the two of you had crossed paths. He'd been on the tail end of detox, then—worn, angry, desperate but resigned all at once—but now he's holding himself with an air of contentedness you've never quite seen him wear before. Still thin, still tired, but better. So, so much better.

You're still not exactly clear as to why he's in _here_ , though.

The question that actually comes out of your mouth, though, is, "The fuck is _that_?"

Gamzee's lazy grin stretches even further. "A bunch of li'l dudes workin' hard to do their thing so we can all get some sweet motherfuckin' loaves up in this joint," he replies with the kind of confidence only Gamzee could show when spouting something so... _Gamzee_. You look at Cronus for help, wondering why, after all these years, Gamzee's speech patterns still leave you at a loss more often than not, but he's still poised and ready to strike if the bowl really does drop and doesn't catch your eye.

Rose comes to your rescue.

"Yeast," she says. "He's activating the yeast for lunch later today."

Gamzee nods sagely like he'd said exactly that thing.

"So you're making bread?" you ask, raising an eyebrow at him. He nods again, turning to set the bowl on the counter as he does. (Cronus follows both it and him like a hawk stalking its prey, and the crazed look in his eyes is kind of worrying.)

"Hell yeah, motherfucker," Gamzee drawls back, satisfied with his work. He then pats Cronus hard on the back, catching the poor guy completely by surprise, and doesn't seem to notice when Cronus nearly pitches forward under the force. "I got a job now. I'm workin' like a real contributin' member of The Man's motherfuckin' kingdom." He flashes you a double thumbs up and you nod back.

Roxy, who had been helping Feferi extract her portion of the morning's project from the oven at his point, suddenly pipes up. "Kitchen squad!"

Gamzee nods again, and then reaches behind Rose to give her a low-five. "Hell yeah, kitchen squad."

"Hell yeah!"

Rose interjects, not missing a beat as she flips her potatoes over on the griddle. "John insisted that he would be best suited for a position on the General Care team rather than no position at all as I had originally recommended, so I've enlisted him for a trial run. He has a surprisingly diverse knowledge of both baked goods themselves and the chemistry behind the process, and he and Jane have had some very interesting conversations this morning." The information shocks you, but in a way, you think, it makes perfect sense. Very Gamzee. "Speaking of Jane," Rose continues, "she didn't return with you two?"

Roxy shrugs. "She said she'd be back soon." She shoots you a look that you think means absolutely nothing but trouble. "We can't start _gossiping_ without her, you know. I think she wanted to get on John's case for—"

"Are you talking about me behind my back?"

You jump a little at the voice behind you, startled that you hadn't heard Jane approach—or even open the Cafeteria door, for that matter. Your foot catches on something slicked across the floor (part of Gamzee's yeast concoction, maybe?) and within seconds your ass hits the ground. Or it nearly does, at least, because at the last second your brain does that _thing_ again and you reach your arms back so that your palms take the brunt of your bodyweight. It still hurts like a bitch, though.

The entire room goes silent for a split second as you blink up at everyone, just as stunned as they are, and then suddenly the crowd descends.

"Oh my God, are you okay?"

"I'm so sorry!"

"Gamzee _this_ is _exactly_ why—"

"Does anything hurt?"

"Did you hit your head?"

Jane frets around you, looking both like she wants to do something and also maybe burst into tears, and Roxy looks torn between comforting her and helping you. Feferi rushes to your side, followed quickly by Rose, as Cronus rips on Gamzee in the background. Rose offers a hand out to you and sighs, hushing everyone with a wave of her other arm.

"Are you alright?" she reiterates, although you're not sure whether she was the one who asked a similar question just moments ago or someone else—there were too many voices at once, and you're still struggling to process the sudden burst of noise. Silently, you nod, and as she helps you up Feferi does a sort of loop around you both, like she's trying to make sure of... Something. (Her kindness still astounds you, even after so many weeks. You don't know if you'll ever really come to terms with the fact that you fucking _attacked_ her, even though it seems like _she_ has.) Rose turns to Jane, then, and says, "Please retrieve the mop from the supply closet." Jane nods, and, with Roxy in tow, scurries out of the room, muttering apologies as she goes.

You want to tell her it's okay, it wasn't her fault, but your throat isn't quite working yet and suddenly there are _still too many people in the room and you just got hurt and the room is too small and_ —

It's like the entire morning hits you at once—the last can of cat food at the top that sends the whole pyramid tumbling down through the aisles of the pet store—and you can _smell all the food_ and _hear everyone's breathing_ and _Rose's hand is still gripping yours it's too tight everything is too much you fought earlier Nepeta was attacking you and then—_

_—and then—_

Suddenly, Rose takes a step back, and that gets your attention. You don't know what you look like and you don't want her to be afraid of you (not like Dirk not like the _look Dirk had given you_ —)

But she's looking directly into your eyes, stern and steady, and without a word she holds her hands out, palms up, and then raises them as she inhales. Pauses. Then drops them as she exhales.

It takes you a second to understand what she's doing, and in that moment you realize the rapid sounds of near-hyperventalation you'd thought were coming from everyone else in the room are, in fact, coming from _you_.

 _Breathe_.

 _Breathe_.

 _Breathe_.

 _Breathe_.

You don't quite succeed at mimicking the tranquil, almost meditative sort of thing she's doing, but she holds eye contact and you just focus on her hands, trying to get your lungs under control. Then, slowly, steadily, you start to calm down.

When you finally look up, you see Gamzee, Cronus, and Feferi all frozen in place, watching both you and Rose with mixed expressions of curiosity (Gamzee) and understanding (Feferi and Cronus). Not a hint of fear.

You're not sure what to do with that.

Thankfully, Rose speaks up, then. Or, rather, she whispers quietly, "Perhaps it would be best if you went back to the Infirmary for some time to rest. You have had a rather intense morning."

Again, you silently nod, suddenly incapable of making your own decisions as you try to force your thoughts back down to a normal, less frenzied level. It takes a moment to get the message from your brain to your legs, but slowly, almost robotically, you turn around and start walking out of the kitchen. It takes all of your willpower not to sprint.

In the main room of the Cafeteria, you pass Jane and Roxy, but you don't really _see_ them so much as feel them near you, because your attention is almost entirely consumed by the door at the end of the building. The exit. The one way out. You don't know if they try to speak with you—you don't hear them. You just keep walking. Just keep walking. Just keep walking.

* * *

The cool outside air helps to calm your thoughts a little more, and by the time your legs carry you back to the Infirmary you feel like you have some semblance of a grasp on what it means to be a person, fleeting though that grip may be. The weight of the metal building doors feels nice, almost. Heavy and real in your hands, and for some strange reason you're kind of sad to let it go.

(You hate this.)

The building is full of sounds and smells, but they're things you've grown used to over the past few months. Compared to the ever-changing unfamiliarity of the Cafeteria, they're comforting in their own way, though by no means _relaxing_.

And then there's Dirk's door, right there, just a few steps away down the hall—the door that leads to an empty room—and that strange, all-encompasing loneliness hits you again like a wave.

(Too many emotions, too many sensations, too many _everything_.)

You don't want to walk past it. You _can't make yourself_ walk past it, physically, and you only have half an idea why. So, without thinking, you turn to the first door on your right.

John's room.

It's not locked, but the first thing you notice when you wander in is that the lights are off and the thick curtains are half-drawn across the wide far windows—a sight so unusual that the haze over your brain lifts for a moment, trying to process the sudden darkness despite what should otherwise be a bright morning. John likes natural light—you know that well enough. He never closes the curtains, day or night. It strikes you as odd that he would do so before leaving to watch you train, and then you remember that you left at the same time, and when you did they weren't. They were open, just like always. Just like always.

And Jane had been in the Cafeteria, so did that mean John had come back?

You blink around the room, eyes adjusting with that same unnatural speed to the dimness, and your gaze comes to rest almost immediately on the slump of John's back, seated at his chair in front of the little machine on the counter—the one he'd called a thermocycler, once, when you'd asked. (The explanation he'd given hadn't made sense to you, but he'd been so enthusiastic talking about it, you'd understood, at least, that it was important. Important to him.)

He turns around suddenly, startling you, and you wonder if every thought that had just crossed your mind had been in that same rush that seems like an eternity to you—the cycle you've found yourself caught too often in when This happens—had been just a moment for him. His eyes are wide, like he's startled too, and they're—

There's something wrong.

You can feel it.

You don't know what to do, but you know you've probably just made a mistake.

"Dave!"

You flinch at the volume, jumping a little because your nerves are still sort of frayed, and immediately his expression shifts to a quiet apology as he repeats your name a little softer. His voice sounds weird. Thick.

"John," you say back, forcing your heavy tongue to say the words. It's the only thing you can think to say. You should leave. You're not supposed to be here, you can feel it, but _something is wrong_. And not with you, for once. Something is wrong with _John_. "Are you okay?"

He laughs and it sounds forced. "Yeah! Yeah, everything's fine."

You glance at the curtains again, and then back at him, and bite out, "Bullshit," a little more forcefully than you mean to. You almost (almost) flinch at the volume of your own voice, but don't. Visibly, at least.

John, however, does.

Hurt flashes across his expression and you see him curl in on himself, almost—so diametrically opposed to the person who had been grinning and laughing on the Training Grounds that you briefly wondered if you'd hallucinated the morning in its entirety, or if you're hallucinating now.

The wind from the air vents flutters the curtains, changing the dim streaks of patterned light across the floor for a fractional second, and you catch a glimpse of his face illuminated too bright in the darkness. The scars on his face—the ones you'd given him—seem to highlight the hurt in his expression.

Every thought in your head comes to a violent, screeching halt.

 _Breathe_.

You don't want to hurt him? You _don't want to hurt him_.

Slowly, you start taking stock of your emotions. You step back mentally and recognize that you'd been getting angry—angry and frustrated at yourself, a carryover from the Cafeteria. But this is bigger than you, than what's going on in your head. This is _John_.

And suddenly you have a direction for your racing thoughts, an outlet for your weird focus and anxiety and overwhelming _everything_.

John.

He's watching you, and the longer the pause between you lasts the more his expression shifts from hurt to concern, until he finally speaks. "Are _you_ okay?" he asks quietly.

You snort, shifting your weight from one foot to the other, and mumble, "Yeah. Yeah, everything's fine," repeating back the exact words he'd just said to you. John gives you a wry, tired smile in return.

"Touche."

As you look at him, you start to piece together the fragments of what looks so wrong about the picture in front of you. Not just the curtains—the room itself—but John. His shoulders, his face, his eyes, his voice, his breathing. Familiar in a strange way, but foreign just the same. Like you've seen it all before in a dream.

He sniffs, congested for some reason, and then it clicks.

He's been crying.

"I asked first, you know."

John sighs, waving you off like that's the end of the conversation as he starts turning his chair around. "Don't worry about it, Dave. I'm just tired. You look exhausted, too—go get some rest."

But you can't leave this alone, not now. You need something to focus on other than yourself, and you're actually kind of... worried about him. This whole thing strikes you as odd, especially since you thought he'd been getting better. Although _better_ , you think, is something of a relative term. Better than what? What are you comparing? _Can_ you even compare anything?

All you know is that less than half an hour ago John was happy, and now he's not.

You don't move to leave, even after John turns completely around so that you're facing his back again. "Did something happen?" you press, taking half a step forward instead. The door is still open behind you, and you wonder if you should close it or if that's the wrong thing to do.

"I'm fine, really. I just need some rest," he replies.

You take another step forward.

"Why is it so hard for you to admit something is wrong?" You don't know why you ask it, or even where the thought comes from—you're too busy watching him, trying to understand; but maybe, you think, that need for understanding is what goads the question out to the forefront of your brain. Or maybe the frustration you're trying to keep at bay starts getting to you.

John sighs again, turning around to face you a second time. He really _does_ look tired, and for a brief moment you think maybe you were mistaken—if he hadn't _actually_ been crying. But you can place the sound of his voice, now; the smell of his tears and the tempo of his breathing. There's a similarity in them now to when you'd found him in the Markeryard, right before you'd passed out; and before that, when you were both crumpled in the hallway upstairs, outside your room.

(You fleetingly wonder why he always cries when you have a breakdown, why those two things are connected; and why it keeps happening, even when you're far apart. Like your moods parallel one another, almost; like they're directly proportional.)

He laughs a little, an exhausted, thin sort of chuckle, and shakes his head. "I don't know," he says. He sounds defeated.

You take another step forward.

He doesn't make any move to stop you—he doesn't even look at you, really. He just kind of sits there, resigned, staring at some blank point in space halfway between the two of you like he's just lost some immense battle you didn't even know he was fighting.

You decide to close the door, because some part of you understands that this isn't something John wants anyone to see—not even you, probably. That's why the curtains are drawn. Over the past month, you've come to understand just how hard he works to keep everyone else happy, and keeping everyone assured that _he's_ fine is what people need sometimes. Maybe that's why—

Oh.

Maybe that's why the match this morning on the Training Grounds had been so oddly theatrical.

Why he'd jumped in the ring without much provoking.

Why he'd joked and laughed away his injuries.

As the knob clicks shut, you turn back around and—without pausing—walk around the lab table in the center of the room so that you're standing directly in front of him. And then you sit on the floor and cross your legs and _stare at him_.

(Part of you feels like a huffy child planting your ass in one spot until you get what you want, but you've never really claimed to be _mature_ in any sense of the word.)

"Did you fake the fight?" you ask quietly, and with your focus so absolutely zeroed in on his face you can see the way his expression twitches even as he refuses to look you directly in the eyes. Now that you're so close, you can smell him—it's almost overwhelming, the scent of sweat and dried blood. He hasn't showered yet, either. "Is that why you're upset?"

Then he leans back in his chair so your faces are farther apart, and you can see the stain on his shirt is still there.

"No," he says, shaking his head. "No, the fight was real."

You frown. It doesn't seem like he's lying. "Then what's _wrong_?" No response. "Come on, dude," you say. "I can't help if you don't tell me what's up."

Then he _does_ face you, finally, and there's a strange look in his eyes. Like you've just said something offensive, or like you've insulted him. "You don't have to help me. It's _my_ job to help—I'm supposed to—" he pauses, takes a breath, and then continues, eyes shifting away again as his voice grows steadier. "I'm fine, really. I don't need help. But _you_ weren't okay when you came in here, so—"

Your frown deepens as he speaks until you sort of feel like you're scowling at him. "Dude, look at me. _John_." After a moment, he does, and you make sure the two of you lock eyes both because you need him to focus on you, and because _you_ need to focus on _him_. Otherwise you think you're both going to lose your minds a little, because _neither_ of you are okay right now. "Talk to me."

"I don't know what you want me to say," he replies quietly.

"Fucking—I want you tell me why you're hiding in your room, _crying_ ," you try to keep your voice soft, but some of the frustration bleeds through.

He snorts, rolling his eyes, and you just _know_ he's about to make a stupid joke about this; that he's about to brush the whole thing off like it's nothing. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he says, "so it doesn't really matter."

John starts to turn his chair around again, but you catch the seat of it with your hand before he can and hold it there, steadily preventing him from looking away. "Try me," you say.

He doesn't respond.

You start to wonder, then, if his weird logic about keeping everyone at least some semblance of content also applies to you. Like somehow the two of you have slipped out of the friendship on equal footing you'd thought maybe you were working towards and into the same hierarchial relationship he seems to have with the rest of the people in Skaia.

That thought reminds you, distantly, of one of the first things Roxy had said to you in person. Your strange conversation months ago when you were still quarantined to your room, when she'd stolen someone's (Tavros's?) keys and tried to convince you that a friendship with John was something he needed. At the time, you'd been angry about it—you'd been angry about it for a while, actually. But the longer you've spent with him and everyone else in the camp, the more you've started to realize that maybe her heart had been in the right place.

You sigh.

"I don't need you, you know," you say.

Hurt flashes across his expression again, and your words catch up with you in time to realize the phrasing _sucked_ , but before you can backtrack he says, "I know." It sounds defeated.

So you decide to keep going. "I survived for six years without you just fine."

"I know."

"If I left the camp today, I'd be okay on my own."

"I know."

With each statement, he seems to sink more in on himself, like you're punching him in the gut. His expression is laced with a strange sort of confusion, too—muted, like he doesn't know _why_ what you're saying hurts, or maybe why you're saying what you are.

You take a breath.

(And ignore your own breakdowns, your own shortcomings, your own weakness, your own lies.)

"So you don't have to protect me."

He looks up at the ceiling, avoiding your gaze. "I know."

"Do you really, John?" John opens his mouth, halfway through a nod, then he shuts it and frowns. You keep pressing. "Did you know we got set up?"

He blinks at you, thrown off by the topic change. "What?"

"Yeah, for real. Rox and Jane had this whole thing planned out—Rox told me way back when. I've got no strings, John. You don't owe me anything, and I don't need you, so they wanted us to start talking. To, like, be friends and shit. _Actual_ bros, not someone you gotta take care of."

"I'm still friends with—"

"Dude, rule number one of the Universal Bro Code: you tell each other the fucking truth." You crack a small smile, still completely focused on his face, and he snorts again—but it's genuine this time. "You gotta trust me, man. You tied me up and locked me in a little white room when we first met in person, but I still trust you."

He flinches a little at the jab, but it seems to get your point across.

(Your hand is still on his chair, and when he shifts his leg brushes up against the tips of your fingers. His body heat is searing, and the anxious laser focus you've been trying to reign in since the Cafeteria makes the feeling of it burn so you pull your arm back too quickly. You hope he doesn't notice, because that, you think, would be counter-productive to the point you're trying to make here.)

After a moment, he sighs again. (So much sighing. So much carbon dioxide in this room.) He tries to look away but you hold his stare, daring him to break your gaze. And then he says, quietly, "I didn't fake the fight, but I faked... I don't know how to say it, I guess."

"I've heard you explain weird biology shit like a million times, dude. You've got the words in your head somewhere."

He rolls his eyes. "I don't know, okay! Like, some of my feelings? My attitude? It's dumb—it's so fucking—" he scrubs his hands over his eyes, under his glasses, but he doesn't stop speaking. His fingers muffle his voice ever so slightly—enough to maybe hide the frustrated break from anyone else, but not you. "I stepped down! I took a break! My wounds are healing and we're going to get more supplies soon and I finally _get_ the big answers to the big questions and everything is _fine_ , but I can't help still feeling—some days are just _so fucking_ —" his voice cracks again.

"Hard."

He laughs, an empty, half-wet sound, and says, "Yeah. Some days are just so fucking _hard_. It's stupid, man."

"It ain't stupid."

" _Ain't_."

"Fuck off, you yankee asshole."

His leg jerks out like he wants to kick you, but you catch it in an iron grip before it gets that far—and before you realize what your hand is doing, either. (Stupid fucking weird animal instincts.) He lowers his hands enough to give you an amused look, but his red, wet eyes rest above a thin smile, and you think, maybe, things are going to be okay. As much as they can be, at least.

(His leg is too hot again so you let go.)

Then he hums a little, clearing his throat, and says, "So you don't need me, huh?"

You shrug and frown slightly, and for some reason you can't really tell what he's thinking. "Nah," you say.

"Then why are you here so much, dude? I thought—I mean I _guess_ I thought that it was quiet in here, and that you needed the quiet, maybe. Or you needed me around for some reason? But, you know, if not, then why?"

You blink at him and suddenly wonder if he's just as much of a dumbass as he is a medical genius.

And then it hits you—the answer to his question, and the answer to the question you'd been trying to avoid earlier in the day.

"I don't _need_ to be around you, man, but I _want_ to. I could get silence a hundred other places on campus, but I like it here." And then he blinks back at you, like the concept had never even occured to him. "Damn, you really are arrogant."

He looks like he wants to kick you again, but the mischief in his eyes is genuine this time, so you consider letting him land a hit. Instead of doing so, though, he kind of snorts a little and says, "Dude, that's so gay."

"What can I say?" you hold your arms out in an overdramatic shrug and gesture to your grubby, sweaty self, "I am who I am."

And he laughs again, soft at first, but the longer it lasts the louder it gets—like you've just made the funniest joke in the world. And then, suddenly, he's thrown his head back and he's covering his eyes, body shaking. Laughing and crying all at once. Roaring, clutching his injured side, raw emotion slipping out through his seams, and you don't think it's just about you anymore.

It's a release of everything he's kept bottled inside his stupid, huge heart for however long.

He looks like rain on a sunny day, bright and tragic. An absolutely mesmirizing mess of a man.

(A quiet voice in the back of your head wonders what it would be like to kiss a human-shaped hurricane.)

* * *

Half an hour later finds you sitting in the chair under John's window watching the half-awake population of the compoud shuffle toward the Cafeteria for breakfast. The curtains are still partially closed, keeping the room dim, and John still hasn't moved from his desk chair. After he'd run himself ragged with feelings and shit, he'd passed out—understandably so, you think—and you hadn't had the energy to try and usher him toward his bed.

You've managed to calm yourself down, too, but the unfortunate result of that has been a sort of mental exhaustion that's made you feel sluggish. You can't quite feel the beams of morning sun warming you through the glass, but you've been pretending you can just to preserve some sense of normalcy. Everything is quiet, soft. Peaceful.

It's nice.

John's gentle, rhythmic breathing lulls you, and you find yourself dozing off as time passes, soothed by the room's comfortable atmosphere.

That is, until John's phone buzzes.

And buzzes.

And buzzes until it vibrates right off the table and onto the floor.

The crash is enough to startle both of you, but while John sort of jumps in his chair, you slide farther down in the one you've claimed, not wanting to move. He blinks around, glasses askew, and announces to no one in particular, "I'm awake," in a sort of barely-awake slur.

"No you're not," you mumble, burying your face in your hands. "Go back to sleep." He looks at you like he's just realized you're still in the room, and you raise your eyebrows in return. "What?"

Then his face scrunches up like someone has just shoved a molding tomato directly in front of his face. "Is that you?"

"No, dude, it was _your_ phone."

He blinks, then looks down at his feet where it had landed. "Huh." As he reaches down to pick it up, however, he says, "That's not what I meant, though. You reek, dude."

You roll your eyes at him, well aware that you don't exactly smell like a bed of roses. "So do you."

He doesn't respond, already absorbed in whatever's on his phone screen. A long moment of silence passes as he fiddles with it, typing quietly, and you're just about to start snoozing again when he sighs. "Rose wants to know if we're going to breakfast."

"Are we?" you ask, making it clear with the tone of your voice that walking through the Cafeteria crowd is _not_ something you want anything to do with. John looks at you and then frowns again like he's trying to decide whether or not _he_ wants to, either. Then he rubs his eyes and stretches, long and slow, and winces. That worries you a little, but not enough to say anything.

"Well, whether or not we do, we _both_ need showers. I feel gross and you smell gross," he hums, standing, "and quite frankly I'm surprised you could stand to be in the same room with me this long if I stink even half as bad as you."

"Trust me," you mumble back halfheartedly, "you smell worse than a gym bag full of sports pads or whatever that haven't been washed in a year."

He snorts. "Eloquent."

"Shut up, I'm tired."

To emphasize your point, you close your eyes and put your head back down, daring him to make you get up. You're kind of hoping he won't do anything—just leave you in the room to ruminate in your flith alone—but you hear him shuffling around and after a moment something soft and... light? Shoots through the air toward you. You lift your head just in time to catch it—a towel. John's standing just a few feet away from you, shower bag in one hand and a wad of quesitonably-clean clothes in the other.

"Come on, dude. Let's go."

You squint at him, and then, without breaking eye contact, drop the towel on the floor. You're feeling particularly stubborn for some reason—maybe because you really _are_ exhausted. "Make me."

John sighs, long and dramatic, and it kind of rolls into an aggravated groan that increases in volume with every step he's suddenly taking toward you. You squint harder, not really sure what he's about to do and not really liking where this is going, and then suddenly John's right in front of you and he's dropped the clothes and—

" _Holy fucking—fuck you!_ "

You're off the ground and he's got you halfway slung over one shoulder like an _extremely_ undignified sack of flour. Or potatoes. Or whatever the hell the saying actually is—at this point it doesn't even matter.

Without thinking, you kick your legs in an attempt to off-balance your weight and get the _fuck_ out of his grip. But John just reaches his other arm, now free, and holds you in place with an iron grip. Laughing, of course, in that aggravating (heartwarming) full-of-shit (endearing) way he does.

"You still don't weigh much at all," he says, almost like a joke. But there's a kind of... Sad tone in his voice that's gone as quickly as it'd come. "Alright, let's go."

" _Why_?" you sort of squawk.

He bounces you a little bit so he can get a better grip and then turns toward the door, completely ignoring the heap of clothes he'd just dropped on the floor. "Because you smell like death, dude," he says, matter-of-fact. You sort of want to kick that stupid, smug expression off his face.

"You're going to _carry me_ all the way to the fucking _showers_?"

He hums, nodding, and his cheeks brush up against your side when he does. It feels weird, like two pieces of the human body that shouldn't come in contact with each other, or that rarely do, at least. Your brain kind of shorts out for a second, trying to process the sensation, and you stop struggling—and go a little limp. You feel a hazy sense of defeat.

"If you put up a fight, yes. If you're going to come quietly, however, I'll let you down."

You hang your head, scowling at the floor and John's shoes, feeling a little (a lot) like a child forced to do chores. "Fine," you sigh, wheezing because you're bent at an almost ninety degree angle over his shoulder and it's starting to cut your air supply off.

You wait for John to gently let you down.

(He backtracks a little—)

But no.

(—stands directly over the abandoned clothes pile—)

He just drops you.

(—and snickers.)

You let out a pained graon and roll over just enough to flip him off. Thankfully, the fabric had softened your landing, but pain means nothing to a bruised ego.

"Shower time!" he grins, turning back toward the door in one smooth motion.

"I hate you," you mumble back, but it doesn't have any venom. As agonizingly slow as possible, you start to get up and collect the clothes, hoping the speed of molasses might piss him off. Predictably, he just stands in the doorway, knob in hand, and rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet with a shit-eating smile. Totally unfazed. As usual.

Your hand hits the shower caddy under the pile and you toss a bar of soap at his head. He catches it with a light laugh and then pivots on his heel, heading out into the hallway, not even bothering to check that you're still following. He knows you are—of _course_ you are.

The morning is still clear, sun shining down in a way that might be warm—it's July now, after all; not even Washington can stay cold forever—but the only thing it means for you is a glaring brightness that seems, somehow, to reflect off everything. The last dampness of dew still clinging to the grass, the white showing through the mud and dried blood on John's shirt, the strange mineral sparkles in the stones that make up the buildings around you.

It irks you, both the sun and your inability to stand it.

You've come to accept that you're somewhere between human and Cured—more one than the other, but also not—trapped in a strange cycle of biology and personality. You're not built for the night, physically, but you can't stand the day, either. And the people you want to be with most rise and set as the sun does, too. Your sleep schedule is a mess. _You're_ a mess.

You glare at John's back as he strides forward in the general direction of the bathrooms, almost envious of how unphased he seems by the light. It's only been a few months, but you can barely remember what it feels like not to be affected.

Someday soon, you think—when you've settled into your own skin and your own brain—you'll have to make a choice. You'll have to decide which camp to live in, and what your job in Skaia will be. That choice will determine where you are and who you spend the most time with, and what schedule you keep. How you'll live.

You'll have to choose whether you want to be someone who lives in darkness, or someone who survives in light.

No one has mentioned it to you, like there's no pressure to decide, but you can feel the weight of it nonetheless. Terezi, Gamzee, and even your little brother—they've found where they're supposed to be. But you?

(John hums a little under his breath, and you squint up to see the building you're in search of just ahead.)

You barely know who you are anymore, let alone what you're supposed to do.

* * *

John has a terrible singing voice.

"If you're going to wail while you wash your dick, at least do it with some kind of tune," you growl, half-considering how much damage you'd do to the tile wall of your shower stall if you punched it. From the stall next to yours, his voice gets louder, deep and rough and almost grating on the ears in a way his laugh isn't. You dunk your head under the shower spicket, rinsing the soap out of your hair and hoping the water will drown out some of the noise—but, because the world hates you and everything sucks, it doesn't. "And why the _fuck_ are you singing _White Christmas_ in _July_?"

The noise stops, then, and you hear him laugh. "I just felt like it," he shouts back louder than he needs to, voice laced with a combination of mirth and mischief that's somehow infuriating and comforting, all at once. "What, am I disturbing your _intimate time_ in the shower?"

"Are you fourteen?"

"Twenty-five, actually."

"I _know_ that, I meant—actually, you know what?" you say, cupping your hands under the water so a small pool starts to form in your palms. "Fuck you." You launch the puddle over the wall seperating the two of you, and then blink as you realize that probably accomplished nothing.

"Oh, come on, Dave. It could be worse," he replies.

" _How_? How could it possibly be worse."

"I could be singing Mariah Carey."

"No, no, don't even—don't you fucking _dare_ —"

But he's already started destroying the most iconic rendition of _All I Want For Christmas_ ever recorded, voice cracking at unprecedented levels as his baritone voice struggles to hit the high soprano notes. You wonder if it's possible to drown yourself in a shower, and also how embarrassing it would be if you fucked up killing yourself over this.

And then it gets worse.

You hear the rustle of his shower curtain opening and think maybe, with a swell of misplaced hope, he'll cut it out—but then suddenly he's thrown open your shower curtain, too, one knee on the ground, belting out the ballad with a bar of soap for a microphone and his free hand stretched out toward you. Naked as the day he came into this shitfucked hell of a world.

"All I want for Christma-as is _yo-o-o-_ -"

" _Get the fuck out!_ " You yell, slamming your shower curtain shut as much as you can a length of plastic-lined fabric, and John's botched melisma chokes out into raucous laughter. " _Fuck you!_ "

You shut the water off with more force than is strictly necessary, debating the merits and drawbacks of opening the curtain again to get your towel and what you might find on the other side. Before you can decide whether or not you want to face a bare-assed John serenading you with holiday carols, though, it's lobbed over the curtain rod. John's laughter starts dying down and you can hear the rustle of cloth that tells you he's started drying off, too. You don't thank him.

Hoping to preserve some shred of what little decency you have left, you scrub your hair as dry as you can and then wrap the towel around your waist, not bothering to look in John's direction at all as you beeline for your clean clothes, crumpled up on the bench that parallels the showers against the opposite wall of the small building.

Then John's laughter trails off, and he sighs.

You look at him, suddenly worried—remembering the state you'd found him in an hour ago, now—but he's not looking at you. He already has his pants on, and he's inspecting his side, a frown on his face. "I forgot gauze," he mumbles, more to himself than you, you think, and that draws your attention to his healing wounds.

They're looking better— _he's_ looking better—most of the smaller cuts on his back, shoulders, and arms having already healed and faded to thin pink lines duller than the ones on his face. A few deeper gnashes still stand out, scabbed over but in no way gruesome, and the bruising on his injured wrist and arm has long-since disappeared. The wound on his side is a mess, but a healing one, a few cracks in the massive scab from his fight earlier but nothing serious, and even then the whole thing seems... smaller, somehow, ringed by raised, tough pink skin in a way that tells you he'll have the mark for a while; the rest of his life, maybe.

On a whim, you look down at your own body, eyes glancing off the web of scars that make you look more like a patchwork of flesh than a person, and then turn back to your clothes. In a single, sobering moment, you realize that Mariah Carey is probably dead.

"I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know. Make my wish come true—all I want for Christmas is you."

You sing it quietly, almost under your breath, not going anywhere near the kind of grandiose note jumping the Queen of Christmas takes the song. And you don't look at John, either—you just yank off your towel and pull on your pants, and only when you're finally fully dressed do you even _think_ about turning around.

He's just kind of staring at you, shirt halfway on, and the second you make eye contact he breaks into a wide, beaming grin. "From now on," he says, genuine pleasure lighting up his eyes, "if _you_ don't sing in the shower, _I_ will."

"Fuck off," you bite back, but it doesn't have any edge. And as you turn toward the door with your stuff in hand, there's a kind of tight feeling in your chest that might be happiness, but you're not really sure.

(Which, of course, disappears completely when John says, "You know, that song is going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the day now," with a muffled laugh.)

* * *

By the time the two of you actually _do_ get to the Cafeteria, breakfast has more than wound down, with only a few stragglers left scattered across the long hall sitting at various tables. Rose takes a break from scrubbing dishes to hand a plate of food to each of you, giving a look your way that seems so parental you're almost not sure what to do, never having known your own mother. But John thanks her for the both of you, waves to the girls, tells Gamzee _good work_ and Cronus _hang in there_ , and then ushers you out of the kitchen before you can decide.

You eat in relative silence, not uncomfortable—just relaxed—at one of the far tables, mulling over whether you should offer them your help when you're done.

The General Care team, as far as you know, maintains the Cafeteria, does laundry, and just sort of _generally_ keeps the whole of Skaia running smoothly. Rose helps with people's mental state in the same way that John does their physical, and they rarely—if ever—engage in any form of combat. It would be a quiet job, not easy but simple nonetheless, and a welcome respite after constantly fighting for six years in Houston. The fact that work like that still exists blows your mind a little, too—that there's enough peace here to warrant it.

Somehow, though, you can't see yourself weaving through throngs of people, passing out food. It would be nice, but you don't know if you're made for it—even so, you're happy that Gamzee has found his place there.

You finish your food and mentally check that field off your list, and only realize you've been humming Christmas carols the whole time when John snickers around his fork.

The rest of the day is quiet, too, like your meal. It's a nice follow up to the morning's chaos. After lounging in John's office for a good two hours while he reads, he stretches and stands, announcing that he's going to track down Jade to see if she needs any help, and you nod but don't join him. Political stuff, probably—big important leader-ly duties not for the likes of you—although, after you process the strange, almost wistful look John gives you as he leaves you alone, you realize you might have been welcome if you'd just asked. But you hadn't, so you resign yourself to finding something else to do.

Although laying in the sun until tonight's meeting sounds appealing, there's still that nagging sensation of uncertainty in the back of your brain, so eventually you leave to wander the camp without any particular destination in mind.

Idly, you wonder how long this kind of lulled peace will last—when John will step back up as leader, when Dirk will get back, when you'll be busy doing... whatever. It's strange, you think, considering _peace_ and your place in life. You hadn't done that since you were eighteen, sitting in a grungy apartment in Houston with your brother, drawing comics at night and working two minimum wage jobs to keep him safe and happy.

You can't protect him anymore, you realize, and you haven't been able to for quite a while. He's off doing his duty, helping, being productive; and you're here still trying to relearn how to stand on your own in a fight. Dirk has passed you, somehow.

He's grown up, and that terrifies you.

It terrifies in the way that only a parent could be afraid for their child, shaking you to the core with a profound sadness amplified six ways to Sunday by the fact that you're not sending him off to college, you're sending him out into a world full of things that want to kill him.

You feel very small.

Somehow, you end up in the Cured camp, and only belatedly realize that you're being a dick because everyone here is likely asleep. Part of you wants to see if Karkat is one of the few still awake, but decide against it when the profound silence of the place starts to get to you. You weave through the newly-reconstructed tents and homes and head north, hopping the wall your brother had helped build and cresting the hill until the first view of the Markeryard comes into sight.

It's strange being here, you think. It's the first time you've visited since John's... moment, and even that overheard, one-sided conversation feels far away. You wonder how you could ever have hated him without trying to understand him. You wonder _why_ you'd hated him.

No—that's not it, really. You know _why_. He'd been cold, rough. Empty. But you'd never stopped to ask why he'd _been_ that way.

It feels odd calling him a friend, and you wonder if he understands the weight that word carries for you. You've never _had_ friends before, not before the world ended and not after, either. You'd been too busy taking care of Dirk when you were young, and then when everything had gone to shit, well. Things happened. There weren't many people left to befriend.

It's not that you don't care about Terezi or Vriska or Gamzee, really—because you do—but it's _different_. They're your comrades, your team. People you would and have trusted your life to, but, looking back, survival had been a job in its own right. You'd kept your personal and professional lives carefully separated with everyone but Dirk, half because it took years before you really trusted any of them and half because you weren't sure if emotional attachments were _safe_. Not when any one of you could die at any moment.

Not after what happened with your dad.

You shove that thought away and focus on your surroundings, passively taking in the names on the mismatched markers around you. Two in particular catch your attention, thinking you might have read the carved inscriptions wrong, and when you realize you _hadn't_ you catch your breath.

_Jade Harley_

_December 1st, 1964 - January 12, 2032_

_Jake Harley_

_December 1st, 1960 - May 9, 2034_

The ages put you at ease, somewhat, but it's still unsettling to see their names here. Forboding, almost, in a strange sort of way. You half expect a raven to fly out of the forest and perch atop one of the wooden crosses, sealing the deal of a bad omen. Or maybe stormclouds to roll across the sky from nowhere.

But nothing comes—the day stays clear, and you mentally kick yourself for being disrespectful; not that you've ever really been one for respect in the first place.

A few others catch your eyes, maybe family members of people you've met—among them a Leijon and a Lalonde—eventually you find yourself standing in front of a grave you recognize by shape as much as by name.

_James Egbert_

_July 5, 1987 - January 25, 2033_

John and Jane's father.

As you turn back toward the main Skaia buildings and leave the memories of the dead behind, you wonder briefly if you should set up a marker for your dad, before thinking better of the idea.

* * *

golgothasTerror [GT] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board iimportant 2hiit

GT: Howdy ladies and gents!

GT: Everyone piled on the other side of the continent ready to get this confab on the road?

The whole room breathes a collective sigh of relief, you think, when your phones all start buzzing simultaneously. Jake's message is right on time, ten o'clock on the dot, but the tension around the table had been palpable since the nine of you congregated less than an hour before. You're in the Library—seated in what looks like it may have at one time been a conference room—ready to receive Jake's scouting report now that his group has reached their destination.

As soon as you all get the message, the television on the wall that had, up until this point, been displaying a very generic map of the former United States, zooms in on a dot that's labeled _Missoula_ , and then even further to a building on the eastern edge of the town.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo on board iimportant 2hiit

GG: Jake!

GT: Jane by gum its good to hear from you!

ectoBiologist [EB] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

EB: alright, before we get too off track, let's take roll.

GT: Stiff as always i see.

EB: we're all really glad that you're alright, jake. :)

GT: As am i!

cuttlefishCuller [CC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CC: )(ere!

tentacleTherapist [TT] RIGHT NOW responded to momo

TT: Present.

GG: Also present!

arsenicCatnip [AC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

AC: :33 < *ac waves*

carcinoGeneticist [CG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

CG: I AM HERE.

gardenGnostic [GG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

GG: hello!!!

EB: here!

turntechGodhead [TG] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TG: sup

twinArmageddons [TA] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

TA: pre2ent.

GG: okay everyone on this end is here!! are you going to be the only one reporting in on your end or is anyone else going to join? :O

GT: Hello everyone i believe i will be the only person passing along info from here but everyone is following along and is welcome to join if theyre struck with a sudden urge to jump headfirst into this rousing discussion.

You can't help but frown a little, somewhat disappointed that you won't _actually_ be hearing from your brother or Terezi, but procedure is procedure, you suppose. John glances at you from his seat at your left and you shrug.

EB: sounds good to me.

EB: from here we can see that you guys made it to missoula. did you manage to track down the costco?

GT: We did indeed!

GT: Although it was a bit rough getting inside i must admit.

EB: did you guys run into trouble?

You hear a few people shuffle in their seats, and you feel your own throat tighten a little.

GT: Well yes and no i suppose.

GT: Everyone is relatively fine of course but procuring everything on our list of supplies to retrieve has proved a bit on the difficult side i must say.

GT: Simply because we only managed to actually get inside the building about an hour and a half ago.

GG: ???

GT: We were really quite taken aback by what we found!

gallowsCalibrator [GC] RIGHT NOW responded to memo

GC: J4K3 STOP BE1NG STUP1D 4ND DR4M4T1C 4ND JUST T3LL TH3M W3 FOUND P3OPL3!!

GT: You didnt have to steal my thunder!

GT: I was building up to it you know. Its quite exciting!

In spite of yourself, you snort, genuinely happy that TZ is doing alright—doing alright and giving people shit, as usual.

EB: wait back up you found people?

GT: Indeed we did! Quite a group of them too. Apparently there was a juvenile detention facility in the area and a few managed to barricade themselves up in this ramshackle little town for a rather impressive lot of time.

GG: a few CRIMINALS?????

GT: Theyre actually lovely people once you get to know them! Although first introductions were a bit rocky i must admit.

TT: And does one's judicial history from a society that no longer exists truly matter at this point? I believe we're all aware that more than a few members of our own camp have rather eclectic pasts.

CG: YEAH IT'S NOT LIKE MANY OF US HERE CAN JUDGE, AS LONG AS THEY'RE NOT MURDERERS OR ANYTHING.

GG: okay fair point.

AC: :33 < new furriends!!!

EB: you still haven't told us if anyone got hurt though. relatively fine doesn't mean no injuries.

GT: Oh were all still alive!

EB: and i guess this kind of changes the agenda of the meeting a little bit.

EB: you're avoiding the question.

There's a brief pause, and Jade sighs, shuffling a stack of papers over to John. "You're going to have to take this one," she says quietly, almost resigned, and John nods. Leader stuff, probably.

He flips through a few and then turns over his shoulder toward Sollux's computer corner, waving a hand in the air a little to get his attention. "Something to write with?" he asks. Sollux hums, and after a moment what looks like a pencil flips through the air. It swings right a little, missing John, but you catch it and pass it over. "Thanks." Immediately, he starts writing, and then picks up his phone with his other hand.

GT: Im not!

GT: Are you lot still there?

EB: yeah, just a little surprised. first order of business, then, would be how many did you find?

GT: Eight in total.

EB: it seems like you already consider them relatively safe people, but you have to also think about the safety of everyone here. make sure you think this through before you make any promises or decisions. i'd like to talk with them before you leave, too.

EB: and if all goes well you're going to have to change your movement strategy a little with the added numbers.

GT: Oh theyre not coming back with us!

GT: We extended the offer but theyre understandably wary.

TT: I suppose it is a different situation from Dave and his companions, who had no base and were looking for a place to go. They already have somewhere rather sturdy of their own, it seems.

There's a pause, then, as you all wait for Jake to respond, and after a full five minutes people start to shuffle in their seats. Then, when your phones all buzz again, the message is not what you're expecting.

GT: Greetings My Name Is Kanaya And I Have Been Chosen By Democratic Majority To Represent Our Group Of Individuals To Your Executive Hierarchy

GT: You Will Have To Excuse This Method Of Communication As We Have Not Yet Secured Cellular Devices Or The Like Of Our Own

GT: However The Small One Known As Dirk Has Promised That He Will See To Our Needs With What We Have Left On Hand In The Electronics Department

EB: hello!

GT: Hello Are You The Individual In Charge Of Your Habitation Environment

John and Jade exchange a look.

EB: yes, my name is john.

GT: It Is A Pleasure To Make Your Acquaintance John It Has Been Quite Some Time Since My Comrades And I Have Encountered Non Hostile Individuals

GT: Although We Unanimously Appreciate Your Offer Of Shelter And Security As Extended Through Your Long Distance Counterparts My Group And I Would Like To Politely Decline As We Are Quite Comfortable Where We Are

GT: And For The Sake Of Both Diplomacy And Honesty Between Humans I Must Add That We Know Nothing About You And Are Hesistant To Uproot Our Lives For A Group So Geographically Out Placed

EB: that's understandable!

GT: However We Have Prepared A Counter Proposal Given Your Apparent Abundance Of Perishable Resources Which Is Directly Inverse To Our Abundance Of Nonperishable Edible And Inedible Resources

EB: a trade agreement?

GT: Precisely

GT: This Town And Its Resources Will Remain Our Territory However We Will Establish A Barter Depot For You And Yours

EB: that's a pretty generous offer considering we've only just come in contact with each other.

GT: After Conferring We Have Come To The Conclusion That You Are A Much Larger Group Of Individuals Than We Have Ever Come Across In The Past And Posess A Force Of Military Might We Are Neither Prepared Nor Able To Fight Against

GT: We Would Like To Form An Allied Partnership Based On A System Of Economics Rather Than Trust As Trust Is Neither Concrete Nor Guaranteed

EB: before i agree to something like that i'm sure you understand my own hesitation, too.

EB: i'd like to know some more about you guys before we set anything in stone, you know?

GT: That Is Fair

EB: especially considering jake just told us you guys are from a jail nearby.

GT: As The Missoula Country Jouvenile Center Was A Minimum Security Establishment Every Member Present Who Originated From Among The Inmates Held Therein Were Convicted Of Nonviolent Crimes

GT: We Have Among Us Four Former Detainees And Four Former Guard And Security Officials From The Premises

EB: that's good to hear.

EB: names?

GT: Kanaya Maryam Porrim Maryam Aradia Megido Latula Pyrope Who We Have Discovered Has No Relation To Your Pyrope Aimless Renegade Wayward Vagabond Windswept Quesant Peregrine Mendicant

John starts writing again, and waves a hand behind him after a moment as he copies down the names. "Sollux, pull up what you can find on these guys. Criminal records and stuff."

"What ith thith, a cop drama?"

John rolls his eyes. "If you want it to be, man."

Sollux sighs, but almost immediately you hear him typing away at his keyboard.

EB: thank you. what are the details of your proposal?

GT: Jake Has Given Us The List Of Supplies He And His Group Were Sent To Retrieve And We Will Relinquish What You Requested In A Gesture Of Good Faith Without Compensation Other Than Means Of Communication

GT: Further Supply Requests Will Be Handled Via The Barter System As We Will Exchange Supply Request Lists At Designated Times And Arrange Meetings To Trade Items Requested By Both Parties

GT: Our Lists Will Most Likely Consist Therein Of Perishable Items Such As Fresh Ingredients And Meats

GT: We Would Also Like An Explanation And By Extension An Exchange Of Knowledge Regarding Medical Practices On Your Camp Particularly In Regards To The Physical Appearance Of Terezi Pyrope Rufioh Nitram And Eridan Ampora

EB: so you want us to bring you food, tell you about the cured, and not take supplies by force all in exchange for stuff roughly five hundred miles away that we could potentially find in other places.

EB: seems kind of like a lopsided deal to me.

You blink at your phone, and then look at John. "Dude, you're not _actually_ going to attack them, right? Because that kind of sounds like a threat."

John sighs, but it's Rose who answers. "This is simply politics."

You frown, not quite satisfied, but no one else in the room—not even Jane or Feferi—seems particularly phased by the statement, so you figure it's just one of those things you don't really get but have to accept. Even so, it sits with you the wrong way.

GT: The Benefits For You Include But Are Not Limited To A Relatively Low Risk Exchange Of Supplies That Will Limit Damage And Danger To Your People

GT: Would You Risk The Safety Of Your Teams For The Sake Of Pride

John hums, frowning, and taps his pencil against the table for a moment.

EB: we'll consider your offer and give you our decision through jake within the next day or so.

GT: That Is Acceptable I Will Return The Cell Phone To Jake Now

EB: thanks.

There's a pause in the messages and after a moment Karkat says what you yourself are thinking. "Well, that was really fucking unexpected."

Most of you nod.

Rose, however, just sighs. "In hindsight I wish we had included an individual skilled in diplomacy—or at least interpersonal action—in the group sent out."

Jade shrugs. "No way we could have known, I guess."

Karkat snorts and says, "Yeah, well, that's the point of these missions, isn't it? Shoot first, ask questions later. It's kind of amazing that they even got in there without going in, guns blazing, at all."

GT: Well what did you think?

GT: Theyre quite an interesting bunch!

EB: seems we've got our work cut out for us.

EB: other than all that, for real, how are you guys?

GT: Were quite alright! Took a bit of a fright at first when we were ambushed by the folks inside but it all worked out in the end.

GT: Eridan went and got himself nicked in the leg but overall their reaction was justified.

CC: Is )(e alright??

GT: Yes yes hes fine dont worry.

GT: Queen was apparently the slammer physician so we got him patched up.

EB: queen?

GT: Windswept quesent i believe. Theyve got nicknames for all the former gaurds its rather endearing actually.

GT: Rufioh says tell tav hello and meenah says she loves you and all that very sappy familial jargon.

CC: Please tell )(er the same from me!! 38O

GT: Dirk has asked me to pass along the message don't lay around like a lazy old man bro to dave.

You snort, but you can't help the smile you feel spreading across your face and the relief in your chest. Yeah, you think. Dirk's fine. He's a tough kid.

TG: tell him im not that old

_And thanks, and I love you, too, and please come back alive, and I'm glad you're safe._

GT: Its all been passed along.

EB: are you guys going to be okay there overnight?

GT: Yes indeed weve got quite a rapport going here. It seems like these people havent come across anyone else in several years.

EB: i'd imagine.

GT: The whole building is incredibly impressive actually its like theyve built a small fortress in and around the store.

CONNECTION LOST

You stare at your phone for a second, not quite sure what you're reading, and the delay in everyone else's reactions tells you you're not alone in that. Sollux is the first to get his shit together—you hear him mutter, "Fuck," from behind you, and that serves as a kind of reality check to the situation. On the television, the dot showing the team's location disappears.

John and Karkat are on their feet in an instant. "What happened? I thought we fixed this problem?" Karkat says, making a beeline for the computer hub.

"Yeah, I did too," Sollux replies.

You exchange a look with Jade now that John's seat is empty, and you can see the worry in her eyes that you think might be reflected in your own.

Rose hums, still seated. "They've told us that they're safe and in shelter, so I would strongly advise _not_ panicking as a first step. If anything, I'm thankful this happened now than at another, more dangerous point in time," she says, perfectly even and collected. The tension in the room eases a little, reassured. But not by much.

"That's true," Jane says quietly, maybe only half convinced or like she's just pretending to keep her cool.

You stare at your phone, wondering if you glare at it hard enough the signal will come back online. "Is there _anything_ we can do?" you ask. When you hear John sigh, though, you already know what he's going to say.

"Wait, pretty much. That's it."

Sollux huffs, frustrated, but doesn't say a thing to dispute John's answer.

You feel powerless—you _are_ powerless. And some small part of you wonders why you're finally worrying _now_ , weeks after Dirk left and when he's already found shelter; why you haven't bothered to talk to him before this, held back by some strange combination of pride? Insecurity? You're not sure.

The moment that little blip on the map vanishes, it's like a piece of yourself vanished, sucking the life out of you—an anoesis wherein you have the sudden, profound knowledge that something is _wrong, wrong, wrong_ but you can't pinpoint why. It's a feeling you've only felt once or twice before, like a primordial gut instinct, and it siezes your muscles and chills your skin as the seconds of tense silence slip by.

John starts talking, and then maybe Karkat, but you keep staring at your phone—at the CONNECTION LOST message—only privy to the sound of your own heartbeat and a roaring in your ears you can't define.

And then suddenly there's a hand on your shoulder.

It makes you jump, just slightly, and you blink up to see John standing there, concerned, speaking. "Dave?"

He stares at you, and it takes a moment for you to organize your thoughts in enough of a straight line to open your mouth. "Something is wrong," you say, feeling too much like a child trying to convey something beyond your grasp of understanding; describing the definition of a word without using the word itself. It comes out pleading and desperate.

John sighs like he gets it, but he _doesn't_ —you _know_ he doesn't. "There's nothing we can do."

You frown, palms clenching, and glance between your phone and him. " _No_ ," you say, standing. "Something is _wrong!_ "

Feferi lets out a surprised noise, and you realize, then, that you're yelling. And that maybe everyone else feels the same way.

Quietly, John repeats himself. "There's nothing we can do, Dave. It's late, and you have an early start tomorrow. Go back and get some rest." He turns to address the others, then, hand still firmly on your shoulder. "Karkat, Sollux, and I will stay here and let you guys know if we hear anything, but it could be a while. I know it'll be hard, but try to get some sleep."

A wave of resigned looks passes over everyone else in the room, and then Rose stands, somehow still cool despite the stress you know you're all feeling. She starts ushering Jane and Feferi toward the door, pausing only for a moment to motion you along, as well. Jade doesn't move, and when she and Rose exchange a look, it becomes clear that she won't be leaving, either. If John disagrees with the decision, he doesn't say anything about it.

You, however, don't get a say in the issue.

John's hand leaves your shoulder and it feels like a defeat. There's an unbalancing finality to the motion, something that sucks the life out of you, and without a word you follow the others out into the night.

* * *

Predictably, you don't even try to sleep.

You just sit on the edge of your bed, half clothed, too tired and stressed to do anything but take off your shirt, plop your ass down, and stare at your phone in the darkness. No matter what else you try to think about, you can't shake the ominious weight pressing down on your brain.

Dirk's Pesterchum name is still grayed out in the app, offline, but in an attempt to make yourself feel better you tap open a private chat anyway. You can't find the right words to say, though, so you don't type anything—you just bore holes in the blank screen and let your anxiety mount.

Your phone beeps, and your heart siezes up, body wound so tight you almost drop the fucking thing.

— ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 23:47 —

EB: how are you holding up?

TG: literally stellar

TG: heard anything?

EB: no. sollux says the issue is on their end so there's nothing we can do about it from here.

TG: kinda figured

EB: they'll be fine, you know. they're all tough and for once they're indoors.

TG: you keep saying that but what are the chances its the people theyre with that are fucking this all up?

EB: if they were going to sabatoge communications, they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of doing the diplomacy thing, in my opinion.

EB: besides, we've had this problem before.

TG: you really trust whoever these people are?

TG: we dont even know them man

EB: we trusted you before we knew who you were.

TG: i guess thats fair

John doesn't reply, and you're left sitting in the silence again, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time. You feel strangely disconnected from reality.

There's a knock at your door, quiet, and it startles you—you hadn't been paying enough attention to hear anyone approach, and for a moment you wonder if the sound had even been real before it comes again. "Yeah?" you call, too emotionally exhausted to get up and open it yourself.

You're surprised to see John standing in the doorway, but not enough to say anything about it. Instead, you just stare at his frame shillouted against the dim light of the hallway, partially curious, mostly indifferent.

Without a word, he crosses the room, leaving the door open behind him as he moves to sit next to you. And then he leans back and lays down, feet still on the floor, perpendicular to the length of the bed. He sighs, you sigh, and you go back to staring at your phone.

(Somehow, though, the silence doesn't seem as oppressive anymore.)

Eventually, he starts humming a soft, mellow rendition of _All I Want For Christmas_ , and you don't comment on it.

* * *

**[7/15/37]**

You wake up without the knowledge that you'd fallen asleep, groggy and disoriented. It takes a second for everything to catch up with you—the meeting, the communication loss, John—and when it finally does you shoot up into a sitting position.

It's still dark, and there's a soft snoring in the room that tells you John is still here, too; he's in the exact same position, sprawled out next to you with his feet hanging over the side of the bed, passed the fuck out. It pisses you off—how the hell could he be sleeping when everything's all fucked up?—before rationality kicks in and the hypocracy of the feeling hits you.

You wonder how much time has passed, and if Karkat, Sollux, and Jade are still sitting in the Library. You wonder what woke you up. You wonder why John is still here; why he hadn't left when you'd fallen asleep.

(It's a strange thing to see him here, in your bed. Not that you haven't seen him asleep before—the two of you have formed a sort of habitual, symbiotic napping arangement during odd hours of the day and night. He has trouble relaxing, that's no secret, but you've noticed he has an easier time dozing off in his chair or on the floor when you're around to steal his books or usher him to bed and then act as a would-be guard dog to ensure he's undisturbed. Not that he's aware of the last part. But barring a few exceptions wherein you were in a less than pleasant state of mind, those moments have always been in his room, in his territory.)

Your phone is missing, too—it's not in your hand anymore, and that sharp feeling of dread comes rushing back. It takes all your strength not to tear apart the bed looking for it, because you know, distantly, that you'd feel like a huge dick if you woke up John in the process.

Something buzzes, and suddenly there's a pinpoint of light in the tangle of blankets shoved halfway onto the floor. Desperately, you reach for it, and the second your eyes adjust to the bright flash in the darkness you understand what had woken you up: Pesterchum, pinging repeatedly, the same message over and over again.

— timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 00:39 —

TT: help

TT: help

TT: help

TT: help

TT: help

TT: helo

TT: he

TT: hellp

TT: help

— timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 00:50 —

Your brain stops functioning and all rational thought vanishes—you whip back to John, still sleeping, but you don't know what to say or how to speak. You don't know _anything_ , because—because—because—

You shove John onto the floor.

He hits the ground with a _thud_ and in an instant he's sitting up, blinking around in confusion. "The fuck?" he mumbles, but you're already hyperventilating, you think, because you can barely hear it over the sound of your own ragged breathing. There's the distant feeling of someone calling your name—more a sensation than anything you can really hear—and then John is standing in front of you, hands on the side of your face, trying to focus your attention.

(One all-consuming thought takes over everything, catching you off guard in an almost dizzying sort of way with how irrelevant and ridiculous it is: he isn't wearing his glasses. It's enough to capture your attention and help ground you, whisking away the fog of panic for just a moment.)

"Dirk," you say. Your voice shakes, and it occurs to you that maybe the rest of you is, too. "Dirk is in—he's—" You hold up the phone in your hand, clenched tightly in your fist, and when John pries off the fingers that you don't have enough rational to control you see, absently, that you've cracked the screen with the strength of your grip.

He takes one look at it and then produces his own phone from his back pocket, where he deposits yours in its place. Then, with one hand he starts typing, and the other grips your wrist, dragging you out the door, down the stairs, and into the night without a word. It's not a run, really—there's nothing frantic about it; just calm, firm urgency that's almost reassuring.

Almost, but not quite.

Because _Dirk is in trouble_ and _something happened_ and you _hadn't tried to message back_. Why hadn't you messaged back? Your first instinct had been to—it was like you—you don't? Know? You don't know! You— _Dirk is in trouble you need to find him where is he you have to you need fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fu—_

"Breathe," you hear John say quietly, but when you glance up from the wet grass underneath your bare feet (that you can't see, you can't see because the only thing you can see is Dirk surrounded by death in a forest somewhere far away) he isn't looking at you, he's still focused on his phone. "Breathe, Dave."

And in that moment, suddenly, you hate him—you hate him and his grip on your wrist and his composure and how he'd been _sleeping_ and— "Don't fucking tell me to _breathe!_ " you yell, wheezing almost with how fast you're trying to get air in and out of your lungs, and John freezes.

It's so quick you almost smash into his back, but you're on edge—so _fucking_ on edge—that you stop just in time, and he whips around to face you, hand still firmly locked around your wrist. There's a moment, then—a fractional moment where he stares at you in the darkness and you wonder if he can actually see you, and neither of you move, and you _need_ to be moving because _Dirk is out there_ and—

"If you don't _want_ to calm down, that's fine," he says, low and severe. "But if you want to be a part of us figuring out what to do, you _have_ to. Yelling won't help them."

You yank your hand from his grip and growl back in response, wordless, bestial. (It startles you but doesn't at the same time, because part of you understands that this is who you are now.) But you don't _say_ anything back. John takes that as some kind of answer in and of itself, though, and after a second too long he turns back and continues walking. He doesn't even look back to see if you're following.

Karkat, Sollux, and Jade are still in the Library—that much is clear the second John opens the building door, because Jade—fuck, Jade is _screaming_. And that's enough to make you pause, just for a moment, completely thrown off. John doesn't even flinch, like he'd expected it, and it occurs to you then (too late, you think) that you're not the only one with someone you love out there in danger.

From what you can hear, Karkat is trying to calm her down, but at the sound of a foundation-shaking _crash_ he goes quiet and John picks up the pace.

The conference room is in chaos.

Karkat and Sollux are standing by the group of computers, doing their best to shield the tech from her rampage, while Jade is standing at the center of what looks like the aftermath of a tornado. The large table is on its side, chairs have been thrown, and at least one is completely destroyed from an impact with the wall, if the cracks in the sheetrock are anything to go by. She looks feral, almost—and in someways you think you might be peering into a mirror.

The minute she spots John, she's in his face, voice cracking, fists tearing at his shirt. "I _told you_! I _knew_ , but you sent him out _anyway_!"

"Jade—"

" _Fuck you!_ " With both hands curled deep in the fabric, she pulls him close, rocking him off balance, and then shoves with all the force of an enraged bear. John stumbles, half-thrown against the opposite hallway wall, and as soon as his back hits he tilts to the floor.

Without even sparing either of you a glance, she shoulders past you, nearly knocking _you_ into the wall, too. You're so stunned—you've _never_ seen her like this, never—you barely have enough sense to jump out of the way, and part of you thinks the reaction might just be instinct. Karkat rushes after her, calling her name, but she isn't listening; she just storms toward the building door.

Karkat grabs her arm, and for a second you think she's going to throw him, too, but he stands firm—it's so easy to forget how strong his body is, you think, given how scrawny he looks.

"You can't go after them yourself," he says, voice tight. "You'll die."

"I have the _authority_ to do whatever the fuck I want," she hisses back, "and if _you're_ not going to help Jake, _I_ will."

"That's not what I said and you know it."

Out of the corner of your eye you see John start to get up, clutching his side. You don't smell blood, though, which the part of you that isn't three-fourths of the way back to _panicking_ takes some comfort in. Before he's completely on his feet again, though, he starts to speak. "Call a Code Orange." It's not a question.

You have no idea what's going on.

Sollux, who had been standing in the conference room doorway, finally speaks up. "There'th enough gath left to get there if you take the shorteth pothible route, but you'll be thranded coming back if you can't find a way to rethupply on your own."

Jade stops struggling in Karkat's grip and looks at Sollux, then back to John. Before she can say anything, John continues. "They're our family too, Jade. Call a Code Orange and we'll do this the right way."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter theme: [_The Colder Months_ by Liza Anne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UdwTB1r9zc).
> 
> Hey, guys! I know it's been quite a while, but I'm back! [**Here is a more detailed explanation**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S02Anclk_lU) of where I've been for the past few months, but long story short I was living out of my car until just recently. Most of this chapter was written over the six months I was on the road, so that probably why it feels a little disjointed (to me, at least). 
> 
> Anyway, fanart time!! Some amazing artists have created some really awesome stuff for this story over the past six months, so buckle in!
> 
>   * [This AWESOME pic of John and Dave](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/145525824362/appl-juice42-im-really-happy-that-freight) from ch. 16 by appl-juice42!!
>   * [This RAD pic of John](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/145620853617/magentapint-i-started-reading-freight-by) by magentapint!!
>   * [This AMAZING set of sketches](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/146110943652/naridoodles-trying-to-catch-up-to-the-latest) of scenes from various chapters by naridoodles!!
>   * [This INCREDIBLE pic of Jade](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/147258098692/oliver-nero-so-a-couple-of-months-ago-i-stumble) by oliver-nero
>   * [This BEAUTIFUL pic of John and Dave](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/147258195452/dipndops-week-day-2-your-au-or-favorite) from ch. 16 by dipndops
>   * [This LOVELY pic of John](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/156098185227/vticancameox-im-still-okay-my-contribution) by vticancameox
> 

> 
> Thank you so much, guys!! Each and every piece has been printed out and hung on my wall <3
> 
> And last but not least, the usual breakdown of info and ways to get in touch!!
> 
>   * Check out the [Freightstuck playlists](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck%20music) on my blog! I'll be adding at least three more to the tag over the next few days.
>   * If you have anything you'd like me to see regarding Freight, stick it in the #freightstuck tag on tumblr, message me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/pyknicGinger), or message me on any of my [blogs](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/)! 
>   * A special shoutout to my editors Chris and Tree!! If you're interested in helping out, feel free to get in touch with me via any of my contacts mentioned above!
> 

> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! I really appreciate all of your support and well-wishes over the past few months, and I'm excited to get this story going again! <3


	23. I'm (Not) Coming Back

 

**[7/14/37]**

**== > REWIND 24 HOURS**

**== > BE THE NEW KID (AGAIN)**

When your team finally crests Charity Peak, crossing down toward the edge of the highway that runs through Missoula, Montana, your cell phones say it's barely ten in the morning. Whether you believe them or not, however, is an entirely different story. The sky is dim, overcast for miles, and there's a sharp breeze cutting through the sparse evergreens that makes the weather feel more like the cusp of winter than the middle of fucking July. Despite the upper-atmospheric haze, though, the air is relatively dry, like the clouds can't decide whether or not they _actually_ want to rain—all bark and no bite.

Meenah sneezes, pulling her worn zip-up hoodie closed with the kind of fumbling grip that makes you think her hands are numb even through the knit gloves she's had on for the past two days. Jake doesn't look much better, sniffling around a scarf—also knitted—tan skin tinged with pink on his nose and cheeks.

You look down at your own hands—pale, thin, criss-crossed with a tree branch pattern of dark veins—and think not for the first time that you're unsettlingly warm. Not warm, maybe, but not cold, either. Average? Neutral? Your brain refuses to supply the correct word; it's like the strange sensation when you try to take a shower in water that's too close to your body temperature. You almost feel a little bit like you're cheating, wearing your hat—knit, just like everyone else's softest accessory, a dual parting gift and good luck charm from Rose—because you don't really need it.

Aside from the occasional sniffle, however, you're all eerily silent—just like the world around you. For some reason, you'd expected chaos, noise, fire; immediate danger, given both how worked up everyone had been about getting here and back to Skaia safely, as well as your own experiences in Houston. But, you suppose, you should be used to the odd emptiness of the world by now. Maybe.

This kind of quiet reminds you too much of Laramie, of Wyoming. Of death.

Your name is DIRK STRIDER and you are TIRED. Not physically tired, really—you've only been awake for a few hours now, and most of this morning's trek has been downhill—but emotionally exhausted. And you've begun to realize that EVERYONE ELSE in your group feels the same. No one's going to admit it (you have a job to do, after all) but you can see it in their facial expressions, in the way they carry themselves, and in the steady decline of conversation.

It's been three weeks since you left Skaia. You've spent more time outside Washington than inside, now, since your arrival, but on a distant level you understand what the others are feeling. Loneliness, homesickness—a unified desire to get this over with and haul everything you've been assigned to collect back. You're supposed to be here for a few days, whatever that entails, and you can't decide whether you're looking forward to the break or dreading the prospect of having to fight for survival in a place that once held people—a sign that there might still be things lurking around dark street corners.

When the first buildings on the outskirts of town finally come into view, everyone tenses up, and your formation tightens. None of you know what to expect.

But the town itself, like the highway, is devoid of all sound and life.

Small houses in the suburbs, all run down and raided—smashed windows, broken doors, gutted insides. It's more man-made destruction than you've seen in a while. Even Houston had been filled with untouched places, as big as the city was. But this? It's like someone systematically went through every home, shop, and office, wringing each of its resources in an almost clinical way.

There's no way to tell how recent the damage is, but it doesn't bode well for the condition of your ultimate destination—the Costco.

Because Costco is a large, warehouse-like establishment selling products in bulk for every need under the sun, common sense dictates that it would be one of the first places hit for supplies when things went south. You all started out this mission with that in mind, betting on the fact that the sheer amount of _stuff_ inside would mean that no group or groups could completely strip it of everything. And what you might not be able to find enough of there, you planned to scrounge up from the rest of the town.

Now, though, you don't know if that will be possible.

Jake looks uneasy as he glances around, maybe making the same connections you are.

Nothing in life ever goes the way it's supposed to, less so in recent years than it ever has.

As the seven of you pick through the ghost town silently, trudging through this body-less graveyard—a tomb only for culture and memories, similar to the Markeryard in that respect—you think of Houston, and of all the metropolitan shells you visited while trekking from Texas to Wyoming. It's hard to remember what the world was like before it became this—a collection of feelings, of distant snapshots—but even you can recognize how desolate this place in particular is.

A heavy, metagnostic despair hangs over all of you. This isn't what you expected. This isn't what you wanted. This isn't necessarily better than a place overrun by monsters if the exchange is resourceless desolation.

Jake points left at the next corner, signaling the next turn you'll need to take in order to reach the Costco, and, as though you've all collectively lost the will to fight, you follow without caution.

Nothing attacks. Like the rest of the town, this street is as dead as the last.

* * *

When the entirety of the Costco finally comes into view, you stop dead in your tracks, and Meenah is the first one to voice what you think might be your collective thoughts.

"What the _fuck_?"

It's the first time any one has spoken since you packed up camp this morning, and those three simple words start to lift the fog in your brain—and, hopefully, everyone else's. Reminding you all that you're living people, not spirits passing through a cemetery.

Eridan echoes her, softer, more awed than anything. "W-what the actual fuck."

"Well," Slick says, fiddling with one of the knives on his belt, "at least now we know why the rest of the place is a goddamn mess."

The building looks less like a warehouse and more like an Orc fortress from some post-modern fantasy movie. Smashed cars are stacked two—even three, in some places—high around the perimeter of the building, and surrounding _that_ wall is a row of metal pipes jammed into the concrete at an angle, sharpened to points—spikes to skewer anything mindless enough to rush in—wound around the center with loops of barbed wire. The deadly spires aren't just on the ground, either; they run up the walls higher than the stacked cars, a third tier of defense. And the sections of the glass building front that you can see through the garrison walls have been fortified with a patchwork of sheet metal that's of indeterminate thickness, the main sliding door completely sealed off and unusable.

You all stand there in the parking lot, collectively glancing back and forth between Jake and the building, waiting for him to make a decision as to what you're supposed to do now.

He looks lost.

(You don't blame him.)

A long moment passes before he says anything, and in that time a kind of wordless conversation passes between him and Slick. You can see barely-masked insecurity flowing off him like waves, evident in the way he holds himself, in the expression on his face, in the look in his eyes. He wants guidance, but Slick—the most experienced of any of you, you think—isn't giving it. This is _Jake's_ mission, the mission he, from what you've heard, has wanted for years.

And then, finally, he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Eridan and Meenah, you circle the building from the left; Rufioh and Terezi, go right. See if you can find another entrance. There might be people inside, and if that's the case it would be in everyone's best interest to make first contact as peaceful as possible. Slick, Dirk—stay with me. We'll stay here around the front and get a closer look at the wall itself. Questions?"

Rufioh hums. "What d'we do if we see anyone?"

"Try to be as diplomatic as possible. I'd rather not get into a scuffle with people we don't immediately have to," Jake replies, and when you look at Slick he seems satisfied to an almost smug degree.

It's a solid plan, and when no one has anything else to say you all split up into your groups and head in your respective directions. Jake takes the point of yours, bee-lining directly for the seemingly impenetrable fence—which, now that you have a closer view, is of an absolutely ingenious design. It's a more rustic interpretation of what you can only think of as a prison yard barrier—in fact, the whole building looks more like a penitentiary than a warehouse store. It's buzzing with malice and security, a strange dichotomy of feeling—an ominous landmark to outsiders, a haven to insiders.

Buzzing.

 _Buzzing_.

Just as Jake reaches out to touch the barbed wire—the barbed wire laced with something _else_ —the hair on the back of your neck stands on end. " _Don't_ ," you hiss, reaching out to grab his wrist a second before his fingers make contact. A tiny white arc leaps from the wiring to your skin, enough to sting without hurting, really, but Jake jerks his arm back all the same out of surprise. "It's live."

"They have an _electric fence_?" he breathes, staring wide-eyed at the structure now towering over you. "Holy mackerel."

Slick already has his phone out, letting the others know before they make the same mistake.

Then, suddenly, a sharp _crack_ rings through the air, followed immediately by a harsh, broken scream.

* * *

The first thing you see when you round the corner of the building is Eridan on the ground, left leg covered in blood, spitting curses at the sky. Meenah is on her knees, caught halfway between trying to inspect the wound and keeping an eye on the person staring down at them from the building roof.

Jake rushes to put himself bodily in front of Meenah and Eridan, as much between them and their attacker as he can despite the difference in altitude. He doesn't remove either of his pistols from their holsters.

"We just want to talk!" he calls up, throwing a concerned glance over his shoulder to the two on the ground. "We don't mean you guys any harm! We just want to talk."

You and Slick join him, forming a barricade of your own around your fallen teammate just as Rufioh and Terezi round the other corner. Immediately, the gunshots start up again.

Terezi hits the ground, pulling Rufioh down with her, and then bodily shoves him forward out of the way as she leaps backward in a crouch. " _Terezi!_ " you think maybe Meenah says it, but you're not sure.

You hear the distinctive click of a manual rifle spitting out shells—the person above you, because Eridan's gun is automatic—and in response to the shots Jake draws one of his pistols. "Please stop firing, or we will be forced to retaliate in self defense!" he calls, pulling back the safety. "We'll leave you alone and retreat peacefully."

" _Peacefully_?" Eridan bites out, seething. "They _shot_ me!"

You hear him yelp, then, and Meenah hiss, "And _I'm_ gonna shoot you, too, if you don't shut up." But your eyes are on TZ, who's still on the ground. You're looking for blood, for injury, but you don't see any—she's just frozen, waiting. Overall, she looks fine.

That's a relief.

You turn your gaze back to the scene in front of you just in time to see the person on the roof pause, rifle facing skyward. You can't make out much more than that, though—everything is still covered in a layer of hazy fog, and the sun's glare makes it hard to focus on much of anything that high. They don't look like they're getting ready to fire again, though.

Suddenly, Slick elbows Jake with enough force to make him flinch—enough force to let him know that it's _important_. "It's not about us," he hisses, "it about how _they look_."

It takes a moment for what Slick has said to kick in, and then yeah, you realize—yeah, it makes sense. To Jake, maybe, it doesn't, because he's been around the Cured for six fucking years, but for _you_ it does. Gray skin, yellow eyes, sharp teeth. All the trademarks of something waiting to kill, whether it's true or not. And for someone who's never seen them before? Someone like these people or like Vriska back at base or like anyone, really, Eridan and Rufioh and Terezi must look _terrifying_.

Jake gets it around the same moment you do and stiffens, looking skyward with a new determination in his eyes. "Please!" he says again. "We don't mean you any harm, these folks included. They're with us! Please, we'll explain everything if you just let us talk to your leader."

The person on the roof seems to consider it, at least with their silence and ceasefire, and then after a moment that seems like an eternity he disappears out of sight. The second he's gone, Rufioh bolts from his spot frozen midway between your group and Terezi all the way to Eridan, already rummaging through his bag for his first aid kit. He's your designated team medic—not as skilled as his cousin and nowhere near John, but the best you've got.

Slick and Jake exchange a look, another silent conversation wherein Jake isn't sure what to do and Slick doesn't offer any help.

Terezi joins you just after Rufioh, judging it safe enough to cross the rest of the parking lot. And then, once you're all together, the figure on the roof reappears—and they're not alone.

"We will meet with your leader," a voice calls, ringing over the concrete and cutting through the fog. It sounds female, almost. Commanding but wary. "Our representative will meet you at the emergency exit on the west side."

The group breathe a collective sigh of relief, you think. Or at least you do. Jake turns to the rest of you, then, and holsters his pistol. “Excellent,” he grins. "Be back in a jiff!" Like the fact that Eridan had been shot or that Terezi and Rufioh had _almost_ been shot didn't mean a thing.

You want to stop him—to tell him this is a bad idea, that it's a bad idea to go into enemy territory alone without backup, no knowledge of the interior, nothing—but you can't bring yourself to say anything but, "Good luck." You start to reach out and put your hand on his shoulder, maybe, but you don't. It stops halfway, hovering in the air, empty. It's only been a few minutes since you all arrived at the building, and already too much has happened too fast.

He just nods and smiles again, and then he's gone.

* * *

Jake returns half an hour later. Eridan has been patched up, and the rest of you are sitting on the ground with him. His wound hadn't been anything near life-threatening, just a graze across the the shallow layers of his flesh—enough to hurt like a bitch, but not enough to put him out of commission. The bullet had passed right though; it had either been a warning shot gone wrong, or something let off with lethal intent from a shooter with fucking _terrible_ aim.

He complains the entire time Rufioh disinfects the injury with the field skills he's learned from John and Tavros. Meenah assures the rest of you that his insults mean he's fine, and you're inclined to believe her. Overall, though, the atmosphere is tense.

When Jake rounds the corner, though, most of you stand—yourself, Slick, and Terezi. He's alive and calm, and you'll never admit—never, never admit—that you'd been worried. That you'd been afraid he wouldn't be coming back, lured into a death-trap by some unknown entity. You're relieved for his sake, and for the rest of your sakes, too—it would be surprisingly easy to cut off the head of the group and take out everyone else one by one while you're scrambling in the absence of your leader. It's a basic warfare tactic.

But he's back, so everything's okay.

You hope.

"We've come to an understanding!" he says, beaming. You wonder, briefly, if he's naive—if he's too trusting.

(But, God, you're glad he's okay.)

"Oh?" Slick hums, stuffing one hand in a pocket, slouching nonchalantly like this whole thing—this whole mess—had been something _normal_. Maybe it is, though—you don't know. You've never been on a mission quite like this before.

"Yes! They've agreed to give us temporary shelter so long as we adhere to certain conditions in the long run. Although they're wary of the three of you—" he gestures to the Cured vaguely with one hand, "—for some reason."

You hear Eridan mumble, "Racists," under his breath, and the subsequent _smack_ of Meenah whacking his head. Logically, though, it makes sense. From what you've been told, even people back at the Washington compound are cautious around the Cured when they first encounter them (and you too, a part of you thinks—you're one of the Cured too, now, even just a fraction). Of course outsiders would be on edge at the sight of something that looks almost identical to the subhuman things lurking in the shadows.

If anything, you're more concerned about the fact that the group here apparently wants to negotiate with you. It's a little too altruistic to be entirely trustful.

Best case scenario or not, from your perspective, agreeing to let you hole up doesn't quite make sense. They have, to put it simply, a _fortress_ to keep them safe, and at least a few weapons judging by the sentry who had decided to take Eridan on from above. And from _their_ perspective, you're just a group of scavengers—which, in a sense, you are. You pose no threat to them, and they have the upper hand. So why strike a deal?

You think about the time you'd spent in Houston, and about the joy-bordering-on-disbelief when you'd discovered there were other people alive and well in the world. Maybe they're just lonely.

At Jake's instruction, the seven of you file into the building through a side door, where a young woman with olive skin and dark, cropped hair is waiting just inside. Eridan limps along with an arm slung across Meenah's shoulder, looking sour, but he's shut up for now. At the sight of him—followed closely by Terezi and Rufioh—the woman stiffens, and only then do you notice that she's resting one hand on the body of a vertically-balanced chainsaw.

Christ.

As soon as you're all inside, she carefully shuts the metal door behind you, clicking the lock and sliding a wooden board in place across the handle. It sounds, for all intents and purposes, like the closing of a coffin lid, and you can see in the expressions of your companions that you're not alone in your discomfort. Jake is the only one who doesn't look particularly bothered by it, and you wonder how he can be so optimistic in this situation. Maybe just the fact that you're all still alive is something to be happy about.

The woman heads to the front of the group where Jake is waiting, and with a stiff, "Follow me, if you would," she starts walking. Jake trots alongside her, thanking her for their hospitality, and she just nods in response, humming a little like she's listening without paying attention.

From what you can tell, it looks like you're in a cargo hallway. Concrete walls, concrete floors, and a checkerboard ceiling with mold and mildew stains give off the impression of an underground tunnel, even though rationally you know that you're still above ground. It may have, at one time, been a loading dock for semi trucks bringing in shipments of goods—something that's confirmed when you suddenly emerge from the hallway into a large storage room with wire shelves that almost reach the two-story ceiling. Dusty cardboard boxes and plastic-wrapped crates sit on wooden plats in a haphazard way, like the place is operating under the shoddiest organization system you've ever seen. The whole room reeks of dampness and dirt, but aside from the thin layer of grime on the floor it doesn't actually look as filthy as it smells.

In the center of the room, there are six people lined up with almost military precision, all with weapons in hand but not at the ready. Three look older than the rest, somewhere between Rose and Slick in terms of age, one maybe older, and the others look to be in their late teens or early twenties.

The woman leading you comes to a stop just a few feet in front of the group, and a tense silence falls over everyone in the room. Then, after a long moment, a woman from the group—pale skin, white hair, commanding presence—steps forward.

"Greetings. I would like to begin by apologizing to your wounded for our hasty action." She nods toward Eridan, who scoffs a little but doesn't say anything that could potentially get himself—and the rest of you, for that matter—killed. "My name is Windswept Quesant, WQ or queen for short, and I would like to formally welcome you to Alternia." It's the same voice that had been on the roof earlier—not the shooter, but the woman they'd gone to retrieve.

Jake grins, not the least bit effected by the mood of the room, and extends a hand that WQ takes. "The pleasure's ours. Thanks for having us! Who'd have thought we'd find people all the way out here."

WQ hums lightly, an unreadable expression on her face as she inspects Jake. This isn't their first meeting—clearly, she's the leader of this group, the person Jake had been taken to meet—but given the short amount of time since they'd been introduced, you doubt she's adjusted to his odd personality. You've known him for several months, now, and _you_ still haven't.

"Indeed," she says. "Although we have encountered small groups before, your party is... Shall we say, _unique_ in many ways."

Jake just laughs, "We'll take that as a compliment," and she nods in response.

"You will have to excuse AR, who is not with us at the moment. He is standing watch, a position we cannot afford to forsake even in the event of friendly outsiders, but I assure you he will return in several hours to apologize in person." Jake nods, but before he can say anything she continues, "Now then, if you'd like to follow me, I will show you to your quarters and then inspect your group's injuries myself. In the meantime, Peregrine and the Mayor will collect items from the list you showed me. If you would?" She gestures toward the back of the room, where another metal door sits in the corner, and Jake starts walking toward it. He throws a nod of thanks toward the other silent members of Alternia's group, then glances back at you all, motioning to follow.

Queen takes point alongside Jake, and the others—save for two, a woman and man you assume are the aforementioned Peregrine and Mayor, who make for the opposite side of the storage room—form a sort of enclosing circle around the rest of you, with the first woman who had led you here taking the rear. It seems almost like a military escort.

Up ahead, you hear Jake and Queen idly chatting, talking about food storage and how lucky they were to acquire an establishment with so much diversity in product. From bedding to clothing to food to entertainment, everything they would need to survive had been prepackaged in bulk for consumers, an amenity enhanced only by the secure, concrete nature of the building itself.

When you enter the main warehouse room, though, you all sort of falter, and Meenah gasps, "Holy fuck, there's so _much_."

And there truly is.

If the storage room had been any indication of the absolute abundance of the place, it paled in comparison to what you're all seeing now. Spartan, scaffolding-like shelves stretch as far as the eye can see, reaching upward to a ceiling even higher than the one you'd just emerged from under. Boxes and boxes of everything imaginable line each, nonperishable foods and gardening tools and more televisions than you can count on sight. In two directions, you can hear the hum of freezers, and as you make your way to the center of the room you see that at one end of the warehouse is a glass-lined room with a large, industrial kitchen inside. On the opposite wall, across the large expanse of the warehouse center and behind a row of ancient cash registers, there is a sectioned-off alcove with a long counter and a blocky sign that reads PHARMACY above it, all positioned next to another cooking area with faded signs advertising slices of pizza and corn dogs for the low, low price of $1.25 each.

"This is incredible," you hear Rufioh say, and you're inclined to agree. It's like a small town bundled up in a single building, an even more condensed version of Skaia with barely a fraction of the inhabitants and an overabundance of supplies. "Seriously, next time the world ends, I'm looking for a Costco."

One of the people walking with you—an average-sized woman with light skin and long black hair who looks like she might be of Asian descent, specific country unknown—snorts at his comment, snickering a little at the wide-eyed looks most of you are giving the place. Slick—and maybe Terezi, to some degree—appears to be the only one relatively unperturbed by the sheer quantity of it all, either because he'd expected something like this or because that's simply who he is.

"I see your reserves are still goin' strong even six years later," he huffs, expression neutral save for a single raised eyebrow at the woman who had laughed.

She just shrugs. "There are only eight of us, you know? So, like, even though so much time has passed, we've still got a bunch of stuff 'cause we've been using it, like, economically. We were already used to that kind of thing before shit went down, so it, like, wasn't much of a change."

Slick's only visible eye squints at her just a fraction, but otherwise his posture remains lax. "You all knew each other before?"

The woman nods. "Yep! We all lived together."

Next to you, another woman—you realize now that, with the exception of the man who had left earlier, the group seems made up almost _entirely_ of women—with olive skin and long, dark hair who looks remarkably similar to the first person with the chainsaw, snorts. " _Lived together_ is a rather light way of putting it, Latula."

The first woman—Latula, apparently—frowns, and looks ready to bite back, but a voice from the front of the group silences her in an instant. "Ladies, we have guests. Behave yourselves." Queen's tone remains formal, but there's a commanding air of authority about it that snaps both women to attention and silences them immediately.

Then, suddenly, Slick breaks into a grin. "Oh, _there_ it is. You're, what, minimum security? Too young for ex-army and way too tame for max." His tone is casual, almost joking, but there's a confident gleam in his eye that's almost predatory in a way that seems unsettling. It's a look you haven't seen him wear, and not for the first time are you glad you hadn't met him before the world ended.

At his statement, though, every member of the Alternia group stiffens, gaze sharpening, except Queen, who looks thoroughly unsurprised at his assessment. You're not entirely sure what they're talking about, but you get the feeling he's just stepped on a landmine with the intention of testing whether or not its a dud. He's the kind of person who would do that, though—put his full weight on a dormant bomb just to see if it works.

"Very perceptive," Queen hums, turning around just enough to shoot him a curious, calculating look. "May I operate under the assumption that you have served time as well, Mr...?"

"Slick, Spades Slick," he grins, stuffing both hands in his pockets and strutting casually forward, running a sly gaze over the women now watching him like hawks. "A few years early on, when I was a brat young and dumb enough to get my ass caught. I'd say you're pretty tuned in to people yourself, Miss Warden."

Queen lets out a dry chuckle. "Nurse, actually."

"Ah, makes sense. No wonder even the delinquents respect ya."

Rufioh breaks off their conversation quietly, raising his hand halfway like he's a high school student afraid to ask a stupid question. "Um, so, like... What?"

Jake speaks up, then, tone light. "This lot's from the local prison!" He says it like he's describing the weather, and you can't help but wonder what the hell is going on in his head. Rufioh sort of sputters to a stop, followed by Meenah, and Eridan—still hanging onto her for support—nearly trips at the sudden halt. Terezi frowns, but doesn't look particularly surprised, and you can't help but wonder if the only reason she's bothered at all is because of her background in law. Aside from that, you're well aware she's often on the side of chaos.

As for yourself, you take it all in, inwardly shocked at the sudden turn of events but even more so about Jake's nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing. He's willingly walked his entire group into a den of criminals, the modifier _former_ still up for debate. It's a reckless move bordering on irresponsible, you think. Actually, no—it _is_ irresponsible.

"Hold the _fuck_ up," Meenah bites, grip on Eridan tightening ever so slightly. "First they shot at us, and now you're telling me they're— _what_ the _fuck_!"

Jake just shakes his head, coming to a stop as well as he turns around to face the rest of you. "Oh, hush now. It's not like they're a band of murderers."

"We don't _know_ that!" she yelps in reply, and you briefly eye the women around you, wondering how they feel about being the subject of conversation as though they're not even in the room. Some look upset, maybe by that or the general stereotyping, and some look almost amused.

Jake, however, brushes her off. "We _do_ know that. And besides, criminal history has no place in the world as it is now, with no central government or legal system, and no one to enforce those nonexistent laws. If we were to discriminate based on past behavior rather than current, there's a faction of us—small, but still there, you know—we'd have to throw out to the dogs. Look at Mr. Slick, for example—upstanding citizen in the modern age, eh? Former mafioso, hired killer, torturer, extortionist, what have you." He shrugs, gesturing a little toward Slick, who shrugs back, half preening and half unaffected. Although no one in your group looks particularly surprised by the revelation of Slick's past, which you'd been under the impression they were already well aware of, anyway (Meenah even has the decency to look borderline ashamed) a few of the women from Alternia shift uncomfortably.

Terezi hums a little, tapping her digging bar on the ground ever so slightly. "He's got a point."

Jake nods. "Exactly. Besides, if we were to judge character solely based on the action of killing, wouldn't we _all_ stand on somewhat precarious moral ground? Where do we draw the line ethically between killing humans _with_ rationality and killing humans _without_ rationality, hm? As much as we'd like to tell ourselves the Infected _aren't_ people, we accept the Cured as they are, despite having come in contact with the virus to a certain extent. It's really quite fascinating from a philosophical standpoint." His tone stays light, expression smiling, but there's something dangerous in his gaze that assures you—and anyone around you who may have been in doubt—that Jake _does_ have what it takes to be a leader. And Slick, for his part, looks almost unabashedly proud.

Terezi is the first to break the short silence that follows as the rest of you mull over his words. "Damn, you'd have been a scary lawyer."

The tension cracks, then, and Rufioh shakes his head. "Seriously, kid—who the hell are you and what did you do with Jake?"

You don't necessarily agree with that statement, because to you Jake has always been something of a mystery—a mystery whose puzzle pieces keep multiplying, making it harder and harder to put the full picture together. If anything, all this does is make you want to see the finished product even more. You want to know who he is so badly you can almost taste it. You want to solve the problem that _is_ Jake English. You've had your moments of resolution, the two of you—quiet moments nestled in the branches of trees, a soft, unspoken truce following the almost meteoric revelations of your respective pasts—but the itch hasn't quite gone away. Not yet.

But Jake just laughs off Rufioh's statement and turns around, gesturing Queen ahead once more. She complies gracefully, and the wordless closing of the situation serves to relax the other women of Alternia somewhat. As soon as she starts walking, they do, too, and the rest of you aren't far behind. Their formation seems more relaxed now, too—they're obviously more wary of Slick than they were before, but the rest of you, in their eyes, are likely less of a threat based on the way they fan out a little and group up with one another rather than maintaining the tight circle around your little entourage.

His words bring out a strange feeling inside you, though—an odd, almost sickly sensation separate from your ulcer-like desire to understand more about him. Not quite guilt, not quite nausea, but equal parts both of those things alongside something else.

It's not that you haven't considered the moral ramifications of what you've had to do to keep living. Rather, you've mulled it over since day one, long before you yourself were the one actually doing the killing. It had been a lot to take in as a ten-year-old, suddenly finding yourself thrust into a constant fight for survival, and more than concern for yourself you'd found it strange that your Bro had stepped up almost immediately to do things so that you didn't have to.

You'd wondered, then and now, how he'd done it—not so much the fighting itself, really (although that was certainly an aspect of it), but the part where he'd had to maintain his sanity while watching out for a snot-nosed kid and dealing with your father all while everything crumbled around the three of you. He'd done it all his life in a different way, but it had become, after the fall of Houston, something far more literal.

You'd wondered, then and now, what he thought of himself.

And more than once you'd wished— _do_ wish—that you were capable of understanding people better.

* * *

Your "quarters", as Queen had called them, turn out to be a single, rather cramped room that looks like it might have, at one point, been an administrative office for the building. The furniture has been cleared out and all that's left is a set of four barren, plaster walls and faded-carpet flooring, but it's large enough for the seven of you to pile in if no one thrashes too much in their sleep.

From what you're able to gather, the space is typically used as a detention or discipline room akin to something called "Lock", which makes sense to Slick but no one else from your group. Based on what you know from old cop shows and common-sense inference, though, you can assume it's like solitary confinement. The revelation makes some of your group uneasy, but the unanimous feeling is that beggars can't be choosers.

Queen escorts Eridan and, by extension, Meenah to her own living quarters, a space in the back of the pharmacy alcove, while the two women who look alike—Kanaya and Porrim, a pair of sisters—shuffle off to find bedding for all of you with Rufioh and Jake in tow. Latula stays behind with the fourth woman, Aradia, who hasn't said a word since you arrived. Her silence borders on unsettling, but you're not one to judge.

Latula, however, has no qualms about talking your ears off, asking questions, and providing long, almost monologic responses to anything and everything. She almost reminds you of Kankri in that sense, but to a different degree—you're not getting lectured, just rambled at.

You learn, over the course of the conversation you listen to rather than participate in, that the rest of the inhabitants of Alternia sleep in various areas of the main warehouse. Sections of the rafter-like shelves have been blocked off to serve as something like rooms in a large house, and some have gone so far as to construct living spaces on the uppermost levels near the ceiling. Apparently, there had been a dispute early on as to who would claim the single office room, which the creation of a punishment space had solved. There had been little objection about it, as the women—girls, then—had become used to the prison lifestyle, and despite an attempt at a sort of _coup d'etat_ to escape the security officers' control they had eventually agreed that staying together benefited everyone best.

Although the town, Missoula, had not been officially evacuated due to its relatively small size, more than seventy-percent of its residents had fled on their own by the time the virus finally reached it in full. That had left an abundance of abandoned space for a relatively small population to eventually inhabit, and even more land and resources for those who survived after the majority of the remaining people succumbed. The prison, being what it was, had not received an official order to administer the vaccine that had started it all to its residents, and the inmates remained relatively unaffected until the staff had begun skipping town. By then, chaos and disorder had taken root both inside and outside the gates, and a gang-like turf war erupted following the escape of over half the prisoners.

Latula glosses over that part, as well as the time frame between then and their group's securing of the Costco, which you can understand. It seems like a touchy topic, as even Aradia starts to look uncomfortable, and you know for a fact that there are some aspects of your time in Houston that you doubt you'll ever tell anyone, let alone a group of strangers you've just met.

There's something of a fuss when Latula and Terezi discover they share a last name—Pyrope—but after an intense discussion about family history and past lives that's almost comical in its seriousness, they come to the conclusion that related or not, they aren't close enough on the potential Pyrope family tree to have ever heard of one another, and write it off as a strange coincidence. Even so, you can see that the possibility of finding someone from their respective families breeds a kind of strange kinship between the two, and Latula becomes the first person of the Alternian crowd to truly dismiss the idea that the Cured might be a threat.

Porrim, Kanaya, Jake, and Rufioh return with heaps of pillows, blankets, sheets, and memory foam mattresses that would have been too expensive for you to even _look_ at before all this, and the discussion continues as you all start spreading out your temporary home. It's a tight fit for sure, but it's a small price to pay for shelter.

Shortly thereafter, Queen, Meenah, and Eridan make their way into the room as well, officially overloading its already straining capacity. Eridan's balanced on a set of crutches, begrudging but—if you know him at all—likely thankful that he doesn't have to rely on Meenah for help walking. Queen announces two things, then, once the fuss settles down and the rest of your group have had their fill of poking fun at Eridan for getting himself shot (thankfully, the topic has started to move away from _who_ shot him in the first place). First, that the two she'd sent to gather your supposedly-requested supplies had finished collecting things; and second, that it wouldn't be safe to leave until Eridan fully healed. There's a murmur of uneasiness throughout your group at that, and Eridan even looks ashamed, but Jake just nods seriously.

"It wouldn't do to put him in unnecessary danger," he says, and the statement holds an air of finality. You find yourself surprised at the diplomacy of it—he's not outwardly concerned about the group, although you're certainly sure that's a factor. Rather, he's taking the blame of any potential incidents that would occur as a direct result of him falling behind off Eridan himself in a political move to ease some of the guilt he might have for possibly dragging the team down in the event of an emergency. It also serves to discourage anyone who might interject about the safety of everyone _else_ for the time being, because if they did they would sound like a selfish asshole for putting their own safety above their comrade's.

It reminds you of John, in a way—it sounds like something he would say.

* * *

Before you know it, Jake's phone buzzes, signaling that it's almost time to begin one of the most important base check-ins of the mission. You're waiting for dinner when it happens, an impromptu feast to be laid out by the inhabitants of Alternia as part welcome gift, part peace treaty, part flagrant show of prosperity. There's already been a long, drawn out conversation with the other party about your (apparently) unique method of communicating with Skaia, of which you became the center as the most technologically knowledgeable person in the group, so there's no particular expression of surprise when he pulls it out. If anything, the others react with mild curiosity at best, maybe born from the fact that cell phones weren't amenities allowed to prisoners in the first place.

By the time the long-distance meeting starts, only Kanaya—Alternia's chosen diplomatic representative for reasons you haven't bothered to pry into—and Queen stay behind, sitting a respectful distance away as the rest of you huddle over your phones to watch the conversation without participating.

Within seconds, you become subject to a raging plethora of emotions as you see the rainbow text messages of your friends and—somehow—family light up the screen. You hadn't expected Bro to be a part of the meeting, as he hadn't participated in any before this, but seeing that single, bright red, three-letter word somehow sends you whirling with a wave of relief and—loneliness?

For the first time—or maybe not the first time, really, but the first time you decide to acknowledge it—you realize that you've never been away from Bro for this long before. _Never_. Not in your whole entire life, before or after. To say the feeling is unsettling is a vast understatement, sharpened only by the unwelcome (or, your brain stubbornly admits, very realistic and extremely normal) knowledge that you miss him.

Not that you'd ever admit it, of course, and not that it would ever make you regret coming on this mission in the first place even a fraction. You're here for him just as much as you're here for yourself, after all—that much you've come to terms with after your conversation with Jake in the trees a lifetime ago. You're here so he doesn't have to be, and so you can, in some small way, start to repay him for everything he's done for you over the past sixteen years. All the sacrifices he's made, both large and small; from forgoing college in exchange for financially supporting you (he didn't want you to know, but you figured it out anyway) to becoming, for a short while until you had no other choice, a killer in your place.

In an attempt to keep some semblance of order in the already chaotic chat room, you'd all agreed that only Jake—and, by extension, Kanaya—would be sending messages from your end, so when Rufioh and Meenah tell Jake to pass along messages to their loved ones by proxy, you can't help but speak up, too. Jake gives you a look when you ask him to send yours—a look that says both _you're so stubborn_ and _I understand why you said that_ at the same time, somehow—but he does it anyway, and when you read Bro's reply you can't help but let out an uncharacteristic snort. It's not your fault, though—you're just feeling... Feelings.

It's weird.

And then, just as quickly, everything _good_ completely dissolves into thin air.

First, less than two minutes after Bro sends his reply, your cell phones all lose signal simultaneously. Everyone has different reactions, but Slick and—after a brief moment of visible panic—Jake remain largely calm, the former rummaging through your bags to find the router so he can toss it to you. You've messed with the things before, both on the trip from Houston to Laramie when Gamzee had found one and in Skaia with Sollux when you'd been named mission technical support (not the most glamorous job, but one you'd been willing to take if it meant solidifying your position on the team). From what you can tell after a thorough inspection of the inside and outside, though, there's nothing wrong with it—nothing wrong with the hardware, anyway. It's perplexing to say the least, and your quiet announcement of, "I don't know," doesn't do anything to dissuade the uneasiness in the room.

"You _don't know_?" Meenah hisses, looking more than a little lost, and you know she's feeling the same sort of emptiness you are after having communication with her sister cut off so suddenly. For all of her toughness, it's clear that she genuinely adores Feferi—that much had been made apparent when she'd told Jake to send her message.

Before you can come up with an answer with even a fraction of the diplomacy Jake or John or even Bro might, though, a new figure bursts into the room—one you only vaguely recognize but haven't formally met yet.

Aimless Renegade, affectionately known to those of Alternia as AR, less affectionately known to the rest of you as the former prison guard who had the gall to shoot at Eridan and TZ.

He's a stout, linebacker-set, dark-skinned man with a stern facial expression that seems almost permanently set, current situation aside. Within seconds of barging through the open doorway, he's already speaking.

"Ma'am! Hostiles from the eastern side! Armed and with clear intent!" he says it all in an articulate, albeit somewhat loud flurry, right arm raised in a rigid solute that makes you idly wonder if he's ex-military or something of the like. Your borderline-amusement fades just as quickly as it comes when the severity of what he's spitting out finally hits you.

Jake, Slick, Queen, and Kanaya are already standing.

"Human?" Queen asks, tone soft and graceful as usual but in that same commanding tone she'd used to strike fear in the hearts of Latula and Porrim less than two hours earlier.

AR nods. "Noir and his men have returned to the base, this time in greater numbers."

As you watch, Kanaya goes rigid, and Queen's expression turns grave. Then, after a tense moment of silence, she turns to Jake with the face of someone desperate, resigned, and apologetic all at once. "You and your superior were right to question our reasoning in offering up a rather one-sided deal, but I regret to confess the truth behind our ulterior motives so soon. Our claim of your superior military might was not a farse, however the implication that you would turn on us was, perhaps, stretched. For upwards of a year now, we have been engaged in pseudo-warfare with a group not unlike your own, with a larger base of operations outside the area sending scouts to secure supplies from our location. However, in comparison with you, they have been and continue to be outwardly hostile with no intentions of negotiating peacefully to devise a mutually beneficial solution to our respective situations despite our insistence for a peaceful resolution as the weaker party. It is, in short, a case of the primordial saying _kill or be killed_ in its most basic form, one that has already been paid with casualties on both sides. It hurts both my pride as acting leader and an ally who has yet to prove myself to you, but, please—"

Her words come out fast, borderline slurred as she visibly struggles to maintain composure in speech despite the apparent desperateness of the situation for her and her people. Jake takes it in soberly, unmoving, but the moment she mentions pride he visibly frowns and shakes his head. For a single, almost heartbreaking moment, Kanaya's face falls, and Queen—who looked like she had been preparing for rejection even as she detailed her plea—does well enough to mask her hopelessness despite cutting off her monologue mid-sentence, perhaps trying to hide any further outward emotion.

Instead of saying no, though, he stands firm. "You and your lot have done enough so far as to gain a fraction of our trust, and if what you say is true than our lives are in as much danger as yours, anyway. Allies or not, this concerns us, so there's no need to bow your heads or sacrifice your pride or what have you." Then, expression fierce, he turns to the rest of you. "Eridan, no matter what you're not to leave the roof. We'll need you to cover our backs with long-distance fire. We'll join you there initially to gauge the scale of the battle, a rare opportunity for strategy. This will, however, be unlike the fights we've trained for, based on my understanding of the situation. The apparent assailants are rational—are _human_ in the literal sense, like every one of us here. If any of you have qualms about that, regardless of my self-righteous tirade earlier this evening, I won't force you to participate. I may be your leader for this mission, but I am not in charge of your lives."

His tone of voice and his brief speech stuns all of you into silence, even Slick, who looked like he had been ready to take charge despite his past insistence at staying second-in-command even in times Jake himself looked lost. You wonder, then, how long Jake has been looking at John's back, reaching for it in the same way you've been reaching for Bro's. And you wonder whether or not you'll be able to say you've made it as far forward as Jake has in his pursuit of a familial idol when this is all over.

Because you're sure of one thing now, at least, above all other uncertainties. Jake English is strong. Battle prowess and physical capabilities—things you've been unable to witness in a real-world situation, not out side of training—aside, you're absolutely convinced of his strength here and now. You've seen him under the pressure John and Nepeta placed on his shoulders in training, you've seen him lead in best-case-scenario conditions until now, and you've seen him here—faced with an unknown threat. He'd been the first to react, the first to process what you would need to do, and first to understand both the short and long-term consequences of what would happen in the next however-long.

Jake English is strong.

And now, as both his temporary subordinate and _friend_ , you have a duty to be strong, too.

* * *

Only when you get to the roof with the others—everyone from both your group and Alternia's, all armed to the teeth—do you truly process the situation you're in. People. _Bad_ people. Not Infected or grays or borderline-animals or vampire zombies or whatever else you've heard them called over the years. Real, live, rational, violent _people_.

And you'll have to fight them.

Not only that, too, but you'll likely have to kill them if you want to survive. Part of you understands that it's a necessity, something only different from what you've been doing now by a slim margin of semantics. Either way it's self defense, right? _Right_?

Before your propensity for overthinking things gets the better of your conscience, you step closer to the rail where you realize, now, everyone else has moved without hesitation. There's no way they're not having the same internal war of ethics you are—or some of them are, at least. (You're not so sure about Slick.) But they've all stepped up to the task, literally leaving you behind, even by just a few paces.

It occurs to you, then, that you're the youngest one here. You wonder, idly, if that has anything to do with it—but the thought leaves a sour taste in the back of your throat even more potent than the moral dilemma of potentially slaughtering other human beings (which speaks wonders of your character) simply by merit of your own bloated pride. _Pride_. That word seems to be coming up a lot lately, more so in the past few weeks than it has in years for—

Your thoughts come to a halt as soon as you realize you can hear them yelling. At first, out of an inherent unfamiliarity with being around others who _can_ yell, you think it's the people around you, but it sounds vaguely muted by distance. Only vaguely, though—they're nearby. The people.

You reach the railing and look over, and almost immediately regret it—a poignant feeling that makes you realize in an instant that, on some level, you hadn't truly believed what was about to happen.

(Even though it's night, you can see them clearly, and you wonder if that's because of your body or because someone has turned the building's outside floodlights on, illuminating the perimeter of the fortress.)

But they're there, on the ground below just outside the electric fence, hurling insults at the fifteen of you like there's no tomorrow, brandishing an array of weaponry half of which you don't recognize and—

"Shit, they have _cars_ ," Jake hisses, like that means something more than you understand. The rest of your group nods soberly, ashen complexions apparent even among those who are naturally gray-skinned.

Queen nods, too. "That is a new development, and from what I can tell there are more of them than before. It was a stroke of luck you happened to arrive today. Had you not, we would have been outnumbered two to one, possibly more."

"Possibly much, _much_ more, if history serves as a reference point," Jake replies, solemn. There's an under-layer of uncertainty in his voice, now, bordering on fear. Something is wrong—something beyond the twelve, thirteen... maybe fifteen people you can see below. Potentially more, if there are still a few lurking in the four black trucks idling behind the small crowd. "So they've never brought them before? You're sure?"

"Quite positive."

Jake is quiet for a moment, and in that time it seems like the rowdy group below you comes to some kind of wordless agreement because, without warning, a shot is fired in your direction. You're not sure who it comes from—most of them have guns, among other weapons—but the bullet hits the concrete just below Rufioh's feet. He reels back as several of you let out shouts of surprise, and within seconds you're all on guard. Slick yanks you back by the scruff of your collar when you don't immediately move, hissing, "Get a fuckin' grip, brat," as he pulls you out of the enemy's line of sight.

None of you are in immediate danger—just a few steps back from the railing and they can't see you—but, somehow, the situation suddenly feels so much more _real_.

"Shit, that was way too close," Rufioh breathes, eyes wide. "We gotta figure somethin' out quick, Jake."

Instead of answering, though, he turns back to Queen, who looks like she's struggling to maintain her composure. "Cars mean noise, gunfire means noise, _all of this_ means noise. And noise will bring in a third party."

A split second passes as she—and the others from Alternia, and _you_ —process what Jake is saying, and then—

" _Fuck_."

You're not sure who says it—one of the Alternians, maybe—but it sums up the general mood quite nicely, you think. No one but you from Skaia seems particularly surprised, so you wonder if this kind of thing has happened to them before. Drawing monsters in with sound.

Jake's own stoicism is starting to shatter, too, and you can see an under-layer of justified panic peaking through the cracks. "We have—We've got no idea if they're aware of it, or if that's their intention. We also have no way of knowing when _they'll_ show up. Last time it—last time it took six days—" everyone sort of relaxes a fraction at that "—but if they _planned_ it, the worst case scenario could be that they've been taking breaks, letting them catch up, moving forward, letting them catch up again—something like that."

Latula makes a kind of strangled noise, and says, voice cracking slightly, "So they could show up _today_?"

Slick is the one who responds this time, maybe because Jake is shaking now. "Worst case scenario, yeah. We gotta be prepared for that, and protect the place first and foremost. If ya get your hideout damaged here, there won't be anythin' protectin' ya—and us—whenever the Infected do show up."

Suddenly, you realize things have gotten almost unnaturally quiet below, and you must notice it a fraction before everyone else because you jerk your head toward the railing and take an unconscious step forward followed closely by Terezi, who doesn't hesitate and beeline's directly for the railing, head tilted to the side like she's listening to something even _you_ can't hear. That catches everyone's attention, but before anyone can ask she speaks up, an edge to her voice. "They're moving—they're surrounding the building."

"The mon—"

"The people, no sign of anything else yet. They're— _get down!_ " She yanks your arm so hard you wonder if she's dislocated your shoulder by the time you hit the ground, and less than a fraction of a second later a hail of bullets whizzes past, where your upper body had just been. "Fuck."

You hear Jake's voice calling your name, but your ears are ringing and Terezi's grip is still firm on your arm and suddenly things are moving too fast.

You're not injured, and you want to tell him that, but you can't because your eyes are fixed on the man below you wielding a black gun unlike anything you've ever seen before and a wicked grin. He's staring at you out from below a green and white hat—directly in the eyes—and you wonder what you must look like. It makes you angry, somehow. Angrier than you've ever felt before, just that one look. It's like—it's like the itch, almost, that same all-consuming feeling, but instead of curiosity it's _rage_.

Vaguely in the distance you hear people talking, feel someone else's arm on your shoulder, pick up scraps of the conversation like _we have to do something now_ and _if we don't, it'll be too late_ but you don't process them immediately. You can't take your eyes off the man below, who's still staring at you, and some part of you wonders how you can see him with so much clarity even though you know, rationally, he's too far away and even with the floodlights it's way too dark for your eyes to pick up something like that. But you _can_ because you're _not normal_ and you're—

You're _growling_.

You realize it a second too late, when the hand on your shoulder tightens and the man's eyes flick beside you, to the person next to you, and the barrel of the gun in his hands shifts to the side just a fraction, and—

You tackle Jake out of the way just as another stream of fire opens where he had been.

And you _snarl_ at the man below, who has the decency to look taken aback, even just a hair, and, through the haze of emotion so strong you almost feel like you're going to explode, one thought stands out sharp and clear—so much so that it's almost physically painful:

 _Y_ o _u're going to kill him_.

Suddenly you have a purpose, and everything—the roaring in your ears, the red fog in your brain—seems to fade away, honing in on that one thing. You're going to kill him. You're going to kill that asshole below for shooting at you—for shooting at _Jake_.

You stand, hauling Jake up with you, and some distant part of you registers that he's staring wide-eyed at you, more concerned at? for? you than the fact that he'd just almost _died._ Everyone else is glancing at you warily, too, but you're calm—almost startlingly so. Because you're going to kill that guy.

(You wonder if this is something like running away, mentally. Like you're completely avoiding the moral dilemma of becoming a by-definition murderer by embracing it instead.)

No one has any time to ask if you're okay, though, because the matter at hand takes priority. Slick and Queen have already started delegating tasks, stationing anyone with a long-range weapon on the roof and splitting the rest into four groups based on Terezi's analysis of where everyone below has spread out to. You're only half listening, really, and some part of you understands two things: first, that you're going to stay with Jake whether you're put in his faction or not, and second that you're going to go to the west side where _he's_ standing.

Due to either pure coincidence or Slick's unbelievable ability to read the situation, you're delegated exactly where you want to be with exactly who you'd prefer, and within seconds you're all standing there on the roof, staring at each other in a solemn beat of silence. Gruffly, Slick turns to each member from Skaia for less than a second, and then says, "If any of you bastards die, I'll kill you myself," no humor in his voice.

It sounds something like a goodbye, you think, but you're too far gone to give a shit.

* * *

 

You have half a mind to just jump over the three-story-high railing, but you're the only Cured (pseudo as you may be) in your group, so instead you focus on not imploding as you race down the stairs in front of Jake and Kanaya. You're not entirely sure who the other groups are, but you know that Eridan, AR, and the person you assume to be the Mayor stay behind on the roof. That divides the rest of you evenly, three to a side. It's so mathematically perfect that on any other day you might muse on the almost _deus ex machina_ nature of your numbers as compared to defensible surfaces, but not today. Not now.

Because before you can get to the west side, you have one more obstacle.

The electric fence has become a double-edged sword.

It's borderline impenetrable from a defensive standpoint, live to the touch with only one section that serves as an entrance and exit. From an offensive perspective, though, that single entrance becomes a liability. A choke. Only a few of you can leave the perimeter to fight at once, and all in the same location, making it almost embarrassingly easy for the enemy to pick you off one by one as you come rushing through. You need a plan, but none of you—not even you, not even the members of Alternia—realize the problem until you're halfway down the stairs heading right for it.

The fact that the enemy had split up beforehand had been a psychological trap.

Whether they'd been toying with you, trying to get you to focus on splitting up before worrying about that single exit, or whether it had been a mocking display of confidence in their ability to take all of you out in one fell swoop with only a few people, you don't know—or particularly care. Your sword is in your hand, so real you almost feel like your palms are burning, like an extension of your body—a lethal extension.

People are faltering on the stairs—you can hear it, hear them scrambling to come up with a plan—but you don't pause. Without hesitation, you make for the gate, locked in place by a thick metal chain the width of your forearm wrapped three, four times around the edge, held out of the reach of the live wires by a small wooden stick and secured with a massive padlock. There's enough space between the slats of the fence for someone to shoot at you without hesitation and not miss their mark, the only place not blocked by the wall of stacked cars, but the man standing right outside—almost a carbon copy of Slick, with a few differences in clothing and the lack of a patch over his eye—just grins at you with a lazy hand on his rifle. He's dressed in black, a stark difference from the others he's come with, who are all wearing an almost ridiculously coordinated array of green camouflage.

The two of you make eye contact as you skid to a halt just in front of the gate, and vaguely you hear people shouting behind you from the safety of the building entrance. But the man is grinning at you, a feral grin like he's _daring_ you to make a move with just a sword—

And you feel yourself grin back, and you feel your mismatched, sharp teeth dig into your lips, and in a decisive motion you dig your sword into the ground point-first, leaving you defenseless.

The man raises his eyebrows.

You take the chain in your hands—two wraps of it, not the whole thing—and _pull_.

And it snaps.

And the man physically takes a step back—

But you're already in front of him, outside the gate, sword in hand, grinning, grinning, _grinning_ at the look on his face because it feels like you can do anything, now, like all that rage—like that ocean of feeling you'd been drowning in earlier—has switched at the drop of a hat to _joy_.

In one smooth motion, before he even has time to react, you swing the blade down and feel it—relish in the way you can feel it as the metal slices through muscle and bone and muscle again, and you hear him screaming as his left arm detaches from his body in an almost comical, low-budget-horror-flick spray of blood that splashes on your face and clothes.

The world goes almost completely still and silent, and in something like slow motion you watch as he falls to his knees, clutching the raw stump that ends halfway between his shoulder and elbow. Everyone is speechless, everyone is watching you—you can feel their gazes on you as you stand over the man who's looking up at you with an expression caught somewhere between surprise, agony, and unbridled _rage_.

You want to laugh.

You wonder if you _do_ laugh, but you can't be sure because your body feels so hyper-aware of everything that it's almost numb.

Then, just like that, the silence breaks.

One of the men surrounding you shouts, "Sir!" just as, behind you, you hear the others in your group take advantage of the ensuing chaos to charge. There's gunfire, both from above and around you, and yelling—but no one here is the person you're looking for, so you keep moving.

When you round the corner to the west side of the building, you see that he's engaged in an almost trench warfare-esque firefight with Eridan on the roof, crouched behind one of the black cars—the only one left here—while his companion provides backup. One of them notices you—a man the size of a mountain with a maroon and white striped hat—and you see his eyes go wide. You must make quite a sight, you think, covered in blood. Maybe you're still grinning.

There are footsteps behind you now, too, and you think Jake and Kanaya must have caught up because you can hear the roar of Kanaya's chainsaw and the almost immediate double click of the safeties on Jake's pistols.

The momentary distraction of your arrival is enough for Eridan to get a clean shot through the front window of the car, shattering the glass, but it doesn't hit its mark behind the back window. The angle's wrong, you think. His leg must be effecting his balance.

It's weird, understanding that so clearly. You know there's a piece of you—the rational human piece somewhere in the back of your head, the person that's drowning right now—that wants, _needs_ you to stop, but you can't. He'll just have to watch. Then he'll see. He'll see what you can do, what you're capable of, how _strong you are_. You can protect everyone on your own. You can protect _Bro_ , and you can do it without sacrificing anything—without sacrificing your happiness, because _this_ makes you happy.

Gunfire sound from behind you, and the massive man ducks out of the way of Jake's shots. He doesn't have a gun, but that doesn't mean he's unarmed—he's wearing deadly, spiked brass knuckles over his meaty fingers, and you know that one punch would be enough to send you flying. And a hit to the head would crack your skull.

Suddenly, you can taste something in the air—something new—and your senses react violently to the almost bitter, choking, nauseating scent. You don't know what it is, but you know that it means _danger._ Before your brain can catch up with your body, you skid to a halt, turn on your heel, grab Jake and Kanaya (barely avoiding death at the hands of her chainsaw) and bodily shove them to the side—

Just seconds before a flaming projectile appears over the car, thrown from the other side. It lands at your feet, and there's the sound of glass shattering as you sprint in the opposite direction of the one you'd thrown the other two, toward the building.

It explodes.

A Molotov cocktail, you realize as you watch the alcohol burn up, catching on the leg of your pants. The thing you'd smelled had been ethanol, and that meant—that _means_ there's a third person out of sight. You rip the fabric of your jeans with your bare hands and toss it to the side without looking, not bothering to check whether or not the flames had the chance to nick your skin. You don't feel any pain, and that other you inside your head—the one telling you to stop, to think—wonders if you even _can_ feel pain right now.

You hear voices, yelling, but they sound far away.

All you can see are the flames, bright—too bright—so bright you think you've gone blind. It throws you off balance, and you can't feel your sword in your hand anymore so you wonder, faintly, if you've dropped it.

(The fire reminds you of the Houston sky at dusk, the massive expanse dyed red and orange, a frame surrounding the burning buildings set off by rioters during those first few weeks. And then after, when you were alone, a quiet sort of inferno roasting you alive inside and out in the summer evenings. It reminds you of a home that isn't your home anymore, far away and destroyed, even though the things that _made_ that place your home are safe, now—safe in Washington, everyone except Terezi.)

Your ears are ringing from the explosion, your vision is gone, and all you can feel is a phantom heat from the fire that you shouldn't be able to with your body the way it is now.

(You're standing on the roof of a building taller than life itself as the sun sets on the horizon, twelve years old, truly sobbing for the last time in your life—loud and broken. The cries of a lost child. Bro is standing on the ledge, looking down to the ground twenty-three stories down, sword in hand. He's covered in blood; you're not, but you feel like you might as well be. A long moment passes in total silence, and then you hear it—the crunch of flesh and bone hitting the concrete below. He's dead long before he gets there, you know—you'd seen Bro's sword pierce straight through his heart and out the other side of his back—and his body will be gone in the morning. Eaten by the things that prowl in the night.)

Someone's screaming, telling you to move, calling your name so loud and raw it sounds like their vocal chords have been shattered. You hear gunshots hitting metal, and cursing, and the roar of Kanaya's chainsaw.

And then there's a crash behind you that sounds like thunder striking underneath your eardrums.

You turn to the sound just in time for your vision to start clearing from white to a faded, almost monochrome expanse of spotty blue. There's the screeching of metal and electricity colliding, and then you finally realize what's happening.

The wall of cars is falling forward directly toward you, taking the electric fence with it.

A man you don't recognize is just a few feet away from you, too, poised with a second Molotov cocktail in his hands, a shot guaranteed to burn you alive at such close range. But he's in the line of collapse just like you are, seconds away from being crushed with nowhere to go as everything starts coming down. You have to move, you have to do something, but your body feels like lead because you can see it behind your eyelids—the fire—and it won't go away. You're here, and you're in Houston, and you're—

A figure launches itself over the collapsing wall, diving down from above with just enough force and time to shove you forward, out of the way.

And then it all crumbles, crushed cars live with electricity screaming against one another as they hit the ground, completely obliterating both the man with homemade bomb and—

" _Eridan!_ "

You take a step back, wanting it go away, wanting to wake up. But Jake is behind you, now, and then in front of you, brushing past to get to—to get to—

(Your father is dead, and you're alone with Bro in a massive, futureless, burning city.)

His torso is the only thing you can see, face down in the concrete while his lower half is completely buried under the scrap. His clothes, his gray skin, his black-and-purple hair—all of it is soaking up the pool of dark red blood creeping _too fast_ from spaces you can't see. Jake kneels next to him, battle forgotten, hands hovering like he doesn't know what to do with them, and you can hear Kanaya's chainsaw growling as it tears through something behind you—you don't know what.

And then Eridan turns his head to the side and looks at you right in the eyes, holding your gaze with a dark storm of fierce emotion that tells you he's not dead yet, that he doesn't plan on dying here and now.

" _Fight_ , fucker!" he shouts, wet and gurgling as more blood spills its way out from between his jagged teeth.

You feel like someone else is pulling the strings, moving your body like a puppet when you turn your back to him without a word. Your sword is gone, maybe somewhere out or sight or maybe under the rubble with Eridan's legs, but that's okay—that's okay—your arms and legs don't seem to care.

 _You_ don't seem to care.

Because the voice of rationality quiets, the piece of you trying to prove you're strong enough not to have anyone else save you, to prove you deserve to live. It's resigned, maybe, to the fact that it—that piece of you— _isn't_ , now. So it sits, and it dies.

(Your father is dead, and you're alive.)

* * *

_It is July 14, 2037, approximately 11:12pm, and you are in Missoula, Montana. You cannot remember your name._

* * *

_It is July 14, 2037, approximately 11:31pm, and you are in Missoula, Montana. You cannot remember your name._

* * *

_It is July 14, 2037, approximately 11:48pm, and you are in Missoula, Montana. You cannot remember your name._

* * *

_It is July 14, 2037, approximately 12:01am, and you are in Missoula, Montana. You canno—_

_Strider._

_Strider, we have to move!_

_They're coming, Dirk! You can't fight them all yourself!_

"Dirk!"

You're warm.

Not hot, not cold, and not the neutral you've become accustomed to feeling.

Warm.

There's something on your face. Hands. Not your hands, someone else's. And they're attached to a body—a living body, with a sweaty skin and green eyes and wire glasses.

You arms are—you're struggling, and there's something pinning your arms behind your back. Shackles or—another pair of hands, not warm like the ones on your cheeks.

"Dirk, I need you to listen to me! You need to leave!"

It's the first time Jake has called you by your first name.

And, suddenly, you're exhausted. Your whole body goes limp, supported only by the person behind you and Jake himself, whose expression looks frantic enough already and only panics more when you start falling. "Don't die on us yet, kid," you hear someone behind you say, rough and winded over the sounds of an indiscriminate chaos that feels far away. Slick, then—Slick had been keeping you from attacking... Jake? You don't know.

Your vision is blurry and everything feels heavy, but you force yourself to look around anyway.

Infected.

Dozens, maybe hundreds—everywhere.

You're next to one of the black cars that the other people had arrived in, not the one that Eridan had blown the windshield out of so it looks mostly intact. One of the back doors is open, and you can see blood on the seats and a lump of... something just inside. There are people around you, too—your people, and the Alternians, protecting the three of you from the storm of bodies closing in. You want to do a headcount to make sure no one died, but you're too tire—

Eridan.

 _Eridan_.

But Jake is speaking again and you have to force yourself to focus.

"—ave to stay with him, I'll meet up with you lot later. I promise. But I have to stay until we can figure out how to move him withou—"

You don't understand what's happening, and even if you wanted to you don't think your body has the strength to respond. You just kind of stare blankly at him, watching the way his lips move, watching the trail of blood move slowly down his face as his head bobs, watching the floodlights reflect off his glasses and the—

The tear tracks on his face.

He's crying.

Why is he crying?

"—romise I'll find you, so stay alive, okay? I promise, I promise, I'm sorry, I promise—"

"We gotta go, Jake," Slick says, and you feel him start to haul you up like he's going to carry you.

The panic in Jake's eyes gets wilder, desperate, and you watch him stretch out his hands as Slick pulls away. You want to reach back and tell him not to cry. It's weird, you think—you've never particularly felt anything like that before. You've never felt the need to comfort anyone, rationalizing that whatever fleeting despair someone might feel will pass with days and weeks and months, and they'll move on with or without your help. Because time is constantly moving forward, and everything is temporary, and—

Something soft presses against your lips, warm like Jake's hands, and then it's gone and you're being slung over Slick's shoulder and Slick is running, firing a handgun, and—

The last thought you have before the world blurs out of existence is how fucking _tired_ you are.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter theme: [_Hearts & Spades (Acoustic)_ by I the Mighty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJDK-wp8C6k).
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I'm sorry about the wait. It seems like I've become an author of broken promises. My excuse is good news this time, though! No unexpected homelessness--just me working two full-time jobs. Busy, busy, busy. 
> 
> And now for the usual breakdown of info and ways to get in touch!!
> 
>   * Check out the [Freightstuck playlists](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/tagged/freightstuck%20music) on my blog or the complete [Freightstuck Music Anthology](https://play.spotify.com/user/pyknicginger/playlist/74jpZo8tTJFf6O9I9xb5nI) on Spotify! As promised, I've added [Dirk's character soundtrack](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/post/158952289322).
>   * If you have anything you'd like me to see regarding Freight (art, comments, questions, etc.), stick it in the #freightstuck tag on tumblr, message me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/pyknicGinger), or message me on any of my [blogs](http://ectoblologist.tumblr.com/)! 
>   * A special shoutout to my editor and [Tree](http://treeprince.tumblr.com/)!! If you're interested in helping out, feel free to get in touch with me via any of my contacts mentioned above!
> 

> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! I really appreciate all of your support! I truly love and adore all of you. It means so much to me that you guys are still reading this story four (yes, _four_ ) years after this whole mess started! <3


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